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John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XX - Essays on French History and Historians, ed. John M. Robson, Introduction by John C. Cairns (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985).
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/235

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The Collected Edition of the Works of John Stuart Mill has been planned and is being directed by an editorial committee appointed from the Faculty of Arts and Science of the University of Toronto, and from the University of Toronto Press. The primary aim of the edition is to present fully collated texts of those works which exist in a number of versions, both printed and manuscript, and to provide accurate texts of works previously unpublished or which have become relatively inaccessible.

Editorial Committee

j. m. robson,General Editor

harald bohne, alexander brady, j. c. cairns,

j. b. conacher, d. p. dryer, marion filipiuk,

francess halpenny, s. hollander, r. f. mcrae,

ian montagnes, margaret parker, f. e. l. priestley,

ann p. robson, f. e. sparshott

Edition: current; Page: [iii]

Essays on French History and Historians

by JOHN STUART MILL

Editor of the Text JOHN M. ROBSON Professor of English, Victoria College, University of Toronto

Introduction by JOHN C. CAIRNS Professor of History, University of Toronto

Introduction

JOHN C. CAIRNS

john mill’s interest in french public life between the two empires is somewhat flatly proposed in his Autobiography. The casual reader of the few and sober pages alluding to his lifelong acquaintance with the land, the people, and the history might not readily grasp what France had been to him: not merely a window on the wider cultural world, but a laboratory of intellectual exploration and political experimentation, and a mirror, the clearest he knew, in which to see what preoccupied him in England. There were times when he thought they did “order this matter better in France,” times when he did not; times even when his criticisms of the faults he perceived in the French character approached in severity his denunciations of faults in the English. But sympathetic or censorious, and preoccupied with responsibilities and problems in England, he followed French thought and French public life more closely perhaps than any other Englishman of his time. France offered not only the most exciting intellectual and political spectacle in Europe, but an instructive angle of vision from which to perceive England. France’s history, its men of thought and action were as integral a part of Mill’s education as the famous tutorship of his father and Bentham had been. Like the early philosophes, he eagerly sought out the stimulating relativity of another society.

The essays in this volume, mostly occasional pieces on revolution and history, span the two decades from youth to middle age, from the embattled liberalism of the opposition under the rule of Charles X (set against the Tory administrations of Canning and Wellington) almost to the eve of the Second Empire. At their centre is the Revolution of 1789, cataclysmic, still mysterious, the ultimate implications of which were far from clear, and about which Mill grew increasingly uncertain. He followed the revived debate of this great affair with intense interest. By no means uncommitted among its protagonists, he tried to weigh the evidence and extract the lessons. Avid for fresh insights, scornful of uncongenial interpretations, he came to see that 1789 could not by itself provide what he wanted. He cast about more broadly for the grand hypothesis that would situate the age of revolution through which he was living and illuminate the whole course of European civilization. Finally he searched for a philosophy and a science of history. Following at the same time the progress of the struggle for Edition: current; Page: [viii] liberty and order in France, he commented and judged and published his opinions until the aftermath of the Revolution of 1848 betrayed the high liberal hopes of February. When for the second time he witnessed the collapse of liberalism, Mill fell silent. He had found and absorbed what he sought from French thought; he did not believe that for the foreseeable future French public life had instruction to offer; his radical and democratic enthusiasms were muted. Thereafter he continued to observe; he continued to travel in France; he was led by the accident of his wife’s death there to take up his last residence in France. But he did not write publicly about it. Writing publicly about it belonged to an earlier and more hopeful time.

MILL’S EXPERIENCE OF FRANCE AND THE FRENCH

the french education of john mill was, like its English counterpart, precocious, thanks not only to his father’s ambition but also to the hospitality of General Sir Samuel Bentham and his wife. Lady Bentham particularly had a clear notion of what was good for her young charge; the boy was willing and the father acquiescent. The long summer season of 1820 in southwest France turned into a year, in which the agreeable pleasure of swimming in the shadow of the Pont du Gard was mixed with attention to serious studies and precise accounts of things seen, done, and learned from Toulouse and Montpellier to Paris and Caen.

John Mill would recollect that he had returned home in July 1821 with “many advantages.” He singled out three: “a familiar knowledge of the French language, and acquaintance with the ordinary French literature,” the advantage of “having breathed for a whole year the free and genial atmosphere of Continental life,” and “a strong and permanent interest in Continental liberalism, of which [he] ever afterwards kept [himself] au courant, as much as of English politics.”1 He had arrived observing, comparing, judging; he left doing much the same, but with less concern to memorize the Departmental “chefs lieux by heart so as to be able to repeat them without hesitation,” and a superior capacity to comment on the struggle among liberals, conservatives, and reactionaries around Louis XVIII.2 He said that France had taught him a relativity of values which thereafter kept him “free from the error always prevalent in England, and from which even [his] father with all his superiority to prejudice was not exempt, of Edition: current; Page: [ix] judging universal questions by a merely English standard.”3 He had certainly discovered people different from those James Mill had perceived coming up in post-war France (“very quiet & contented slaves” under “a quiet, gentle despotism”),4 and he took the trouble to jot down his independent view.5 When fourteen, he had met “many of the chiefs of the Liberal party” at J.B. Say’s house in Paris. Afterwards, he recalled having encountered Henri Saint-Simon there, “not yet the founder either of a philosophy or a religion, and considered only as a clever original.”6 Considering the fuss Saint-Simon had provoked by the spring of 1820 with his celebrated parable, contrasting two hypothetical losses to France (all its creative and industrious élite, or all its 30,000 dignitaries and high functionaries), which led to his unsuccessful prosecutions and trial on various charges—a scandal compounded by the outrage and uproar over Louvel’s almost simultaneous assassination of the duc de Berry—this was the least one could say.7

John Mill was addicted to recording facts and figures. Yet it is clear from the reports he shaped to his father’s expectation that he was not indifferent to the land. He saw much of it then; later he tramped over large stretches of it, seeking a return to health. His letters reveal the profound impact on him of the magnificent French countryside: “I never saw anything more lovely than the Peyrou & its view this evening just after sunset,” he wrote Harriet from Montpellier in December 1854; “everything was pure & the tone that of the finest Poussin.”8

Following his year among the French, Mill’s attentions were again absorbed by his father’s curriculum and his own “self-education.” This included Condillac and a first appreciation of the French Revolution, but it seems to have left no room for broader pursuit of his continental interests. France had stimulated his desire to travel, but, still a lad, he spent holidays with his family in the country, later in the 1820s, with no more than a month off from his responsibility at India House, he settled for walking tours with friends in the English counties. Ten years passed before his return to France. But he constantly followed its public life; as early as April 1824 he sprang to the defence of French liberalism under Edition: current; Page: [x] attack in the Edinburgh Review, protesting the “torrent of mere abuse . . . poured out against the French, for the sole purpose of gratifying [English] national antipathy,” and extolling French science and letters.9 His commitment to France was made long before the first of the intellectual encounters (if we except the brief friendship with the future chemist Antoine Jérôme Balard during his year with the Benthams) that accompanied his reading of the political scene.

Gustave d’Eichthal, a recruit to the rising Saint-Simonian school, first saw Mill at the London Debating Society in May 1828; he was to correspond with him on and off for more than forty years. “Dans une mesure,” d’Eichthal recalled, “c’est lui qui m’a ouvert l’Angleterre comme je lui ai ouvert la France. Ce qui nous rapprochait ce n’étaient point des idées abstraites. C’était notre nature et nos désirs d’apôtre.”10 Though he did not convert Mill to the faith in its brief but curious heyday under Prosper Enfantin, directly and indirectly d’Eichthal planted the seeds of alternative visions in Mill’s mind shortly after the apparent collapse of the world Mill had made for himself at the Westminster Review. Afterwards, Mill said that he and his friends had “really hoped and aspired” to be the new philosophes, and that “No one of the set went to so great excesses in this boyish ambition as I did. . . .” In 1826 he “awakened from this as from a dream.”11 As he arranged all this in retrospect, Weber and Wordsworth then offered the consolations and stimulus of contemplation and inner happiness. But it was the Saint-Simonians who proposed a view of history and human development that plausibly situated the times. It was they who, for Mill, best explained the century’s collisions and angularities as characteristic of the transition from an “organic period” of faith to a “critical period” of disputes and uncertainties, the resolution of which, he hoped, would bring a new era of liberty informed by education and “the true exigencies of life.”12

It is doubtful that Mill in the late 1820s shared such an understanding. And though he may well have read Saint-Simon and Augustin Thierry’s address “To the Parliaments of France and England” of 1814, with its appeal for a Franco-British union that could “change the state of Europe” and bring true peace,13 it is more likely to have been after July 1830 than before. D’Eichthal pressed him in the autumn of 1829 for a statement; Mill was reserved. Sympathetic to his correspondent’s exposition of the doctrine, he condemned the Edition: current; Page: [xi] Saint-Simonian books he had read (one such seemed “the production of men who had neither read nor thought, but hastily put down the first crudities that would occur to a boy who had just left school”). Auguste Comte’s early outline of a Système de politique positive (1824), sent by d’Eichthal the previous year, he found at least plausible, clear, and methodical, but ultimately a clever exercise. Its conception of the ends of government and the constitution of a new ruling class Mill rejected completely.14 A month after this cold douche, he made amends by saying something favourable about the Saint-Simonians, but it was little enough. He discouraged d’Eichthal from coming to England “with a view to my complete initiation in the St Simonian doctrine.” Doubting its applicability in France, he was sure it was unacceptable and undesirable in England.15 Given the report he had of a meeting, Mill wondered “how you have hitherto escaped the jokers and epigrammatists of the Parisian salons.”16

Nevertheless, the Saint-Simonians had something he wanted. The celebrated “crisis” in his “mental history” was on him. He had come through “the dry heavy dejection of the melancholy winter of 1826-27,” was questioning and doubting Bentham and his father, discovering the weak places of his philosophy. He had “only a conviction, that the true system was something much more complex and many sided” than he had imagined. He discovered from acquaintance with European, especially French, thought the logic of the mind’s “possible progress,” the relativity of historical institutions, and the truth that “any general theory or philosophy of politics supposes a previous theory of human progress, and that this is the same thing with a philosophy of history.”17 On the eve of the July Revolution, he was apparently feeling his way. Closer contact with the Edition: current; Page: [xii] Saint-Simonian school in Paris during the summer of 1830 eventuated in the Examiner articles, “The Spirit of the Age,” which revealed that while he was no convert, as he put it, “je tiens bureau de St Simonisme chez moi.”18

More sympathetic, he remained unconvinced. If in the aftermath of 1830 he placed the Saint-Simonians “decidedly à la tête de la civilisation” and imagined their prescription as “likely to be the final and permanent condition of the human race,” he guessed mankind would not be ready for it for “many, or at least several, ages.”19 He assisted d’Eichthal and Charles Duveyrier before and during their mission to England, publicly (though also anonymously) criticized the French government for prosecuting the Saint-Simonians, but concluded that that phase of their work, which had transformed political discourse in France, was almost done.20 His private remarks about the communal life reported from Ménilmontant where, following schism, most of the sect had followed Père Enfantin (“the best man they know, but I wish they had a better still”) were cool.21 After the sensational trial of Enfantin and his disciples on 27-28 August, 1832, resulting in fines, imprisonments and dissolution of the school, Mill remarked to Carlyle that “There was much in the conduct of them all, which really one cannot help suspecting of quackery.” In the Examiner, however, he condemned the government’s heavy hand.22 The subsequent scattering of the disciples, the notorious journey to Constantinople in search of la femme libre, la Mère suprême,23 left him melancholy that so much creativeness should have succumbed to such madness. Uncharacteristically patronizing, he noted that “St Simon really for a Frenchman was a great man,” and the society bearing his name had been “the only spiritual fruit of the Revolution of 1830.”24 He defended it against the ridicule of The Times, however, concluding it had had a “highly beneficial influence over the public mind of France.”25 Years later, he Edition: current; Page: [xiii] still referred to “my friends the St. Simonians.”26 He could scarcely have imagined the immense influence some of them were to have in the engineering, railway, and banking enterprises of France after 1840.27

The Saint-Simonians reinforced Mill’s intense interest in the affairs of France; stimulated by them, he developed a progressive view of history working itself out through organic and critical periods. He said they had “much changed” him.28 Whatever their absurdities, their bold vision of the ideal society, ostensibly democratic and led by an intellectual élite, must help others to move the world toward it. But unlike Saint-Simon, Mill did not think the times were ripe. Hence his own rather Saint-Simonian conclusion that “the mental regeneration of Europe must precede its social regeneration,” for all the dogmas, from religion to rationalism, had proved inadequate.29

For several years it seemed to Mill that Auguste Comte might prove to be the prophet of this “mental regeneration.” Comte had broken with the Saint-Simonians in 1828. Mill’s first impression of the short work d’Eichthal sent him, however, was unfavourable. Despite its arresting aspects, he then thought the view of history “warped & distorted by the necessity of proving that civilisation has but one law, & that a law of progressive advancement.”30 Yet it was to this conclusion that the liberal school of French historians, to which Mill soon subscribed, was attached. Moreover, after 1830 he became increasingly sympathetic to the Saint-Simonian world-view. When therefore he read the first two volumes of Comte’s Cours de philosophie positive in 1837, he was more impressed: “one of the most profound books ever written on the philosophy of the sciences.”31 Further volumes sustained his enthusiasm: “He makes some mistakes, but on the whole, I think it very nearly the grandest work of this age.”32 No one before Comte, Mill was to say thirty years later, “had penetrated to the philosophy of the matter, and placed the necessity of historical studies as the foundation of sociological speculation on the true footing.”33 In the course of Edition: current; Page: [xiv] the decade, from about 1828, Mill had been influenced to rethink fundamentally his conception of history and its function. To Comte more than to any other he was indebted for his new insight. The sectarianism, however, to which he had objected earlier, became clearer as Comte’s work advanced and even less acceptable to Mill as he came under the influence of the liberal journalists and Tocqueville.

Encouraged by Armand Marrast, former editor of the liberal Tribune, who had fled Sainte-Pélagie prison in July 1835 to find refuge in England, Mill wrote Comte directly in 1841. The correspondence flourished, Mill keeping his distance, minimizing their differences, Comte explaining but giving no ground. Comte paraded his persecution by the government; Mill sought to assuage his bitterness, passing on the favourable remarks by Guizot (who had been Ambassador in London, February-October 1840), juggling with the confidences about Comte’s marital problems, promising (rashly) that he should not worry about material matters “aussi longtemps que je vivrai et que j’aurai un sou à partager avec vous.”34 Comte’s final importunings and intransigences wore the friendship down. The financial generosity Mill had arranged from George Grote, William Molesworth, and Raikes Currie ran out. Grote broke with Comte in 1848. Mill professed a high opinion for “la théorie de la méthode positive,” but made clear his disapproval of the manner in which Comte applied it to social questions. Comte put his complaints in print; this did not affect the even estimate Mill gave of him in the Autobiography.35 On the question of equality of women, on the ultimate immovability of Comte regarding his own pouvoir spirituel, they parted company. “He is a man,” Mill remarked, “one can serve only in his own way.”36

For all the angular behaviour, Mill had nevertheless remained sympathetic to Comte’s distress. Harriet Taylor’s tart strictures (Mill had shown her some of the correspondence) on “This dry sort of man” as being “not a worthy coadjutor & scarcely a worthy opponent” he did not share.37 Year after year he had been responsive, protective, patient. But by 1844 Mill’s concern with liberty was so marked that, much as he appreciated Comte’s “admirable historical views,” “I think and have always thought him in a radically wrong road, and likely to go farther and farther wrong. . . . ”38 The prediction was accurate. Sectarianism was the problem. The final statement in the Système de politique positive meant that Edition: current; Page: [xv] free thought would be coerced by the tyranny of public opinion sanctioned by moral authority.39 In the guise of a “plan for the regeneration of human society,” Comte’s imagination had conceived a humourless, ludicrously detailed, anti-intellectual “absolute monarchy.” After Comte’s death, Mill attributed the work to the “melancholy decadence of a great intellect.”40 The result of such a system would be “a despotism of society over the individual, surpassing anything contemplated in the political ideal of the most rigid disciplinarian among the ancient philosophers.”41 With Comte, as with the Saint-Simonians, however, Mill had undertaken “the task of sifting what is good from what is bad.” In neither case had he been able to accept the whole, to join without reservation the “active and enthusiastic adherents, some of them of no inconsiderable personal merit, in England, France, and other countries.”42 Reading a French obituary notice of Comte’s death in 1857, he noted ironically, “It seems as if there would be no thinkers left in the world.”43

By then he had been acquainted with Alexis de Tocqueville for more than two decades. For while Mill was assiduously, even deferentially, corresponding with Comte, he deepened his knowledge of Tocqueville’s views, following his early acquaintance with De la démocratie en Amérique. The style of his exchange with Tocqueville differed greatly from that of his relations with Comte or the Saint-Simonians. With the last he had been the pursued, the reserved commentator, to some extent the receptive pupil, the distressed friend and even-handed defender. With Comte, after an initially negative reaction, he had been the admiring convert and interlocutor, the helpful friend, and finally the disenchanted critic, convinced that, though Comte’s insight into the nature of the historical process was profound and true, the ultimate meaning of his system was abhorrent. With Tocqueville there were reservations, question marks, but the meeting of minds at first seemed close. If the Saint-Simonians raised doubts about the steadiness of brilliant French thinkers, and Comte illustrated the limitation of the doctrinaire mentality, Tocqueville confirmed that impression of liberality in the “continental” mind Mill said he had taken back to England from his boyhood visit to France. In each case, what first attracted Mill was the broad historical conception they all advanced.

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“I have begun to read Tocqueville,” he noted in April 1835. “It seems an excellent book: uniting considerable graphic power, with the capacity of generalizing on the history of society, which distinguishes the best French philosophers of the present day. . . .”44 On Tocqueville’s second visit to England in May 1835, Mill’s direct overture to him as a possible correspondent for the London Review brought the warmest response, and flattery that “peu de Français savent manier leur langue comme vous maniez la nôtre.”45 Their differences about democracy were in the open from the beginning, even if Mill underplayed beforehand his published criticism of the first two volumes of the Démocratie (“a shade more favourable to democracy than your book, although in the main I agree, so far as I am competent to judge, in the unfavourable part of your remarks, but without carrying them quite so far”). The review was handsome enough: he pronounced the book to be a work “such as Montesquieu might have written, if to his genius he had superadded good sense.”46 This broad proclamation that the “insular” crowd of English politicians should take it from a Frenchman, “whose impartiality as between aristocracy and democracy is unparalleled in our time,” that “the progress of democracy neither can nor ought to be stopped”47 was the vigorous beginning of his reflection on and dialogue with Tocqueville. Tocqueville reshaped Mill’s approach to, acceptance of, and effort to resolve the difficulties and dangers of democracy. Of all his reviewers, he said, Mill was “le seul qui m’ait entièrement compris, qui ait su saisir d’une vue générale l’ensemble de mes idées, la tendance finale de mon esprit.”48

As it turned out, Tocqueville contributed only once to Mill’s journal; Mill ventured to convey that “people here” found the article “a little abstract.”49 But their relations were good: he once told Tocqueville that he and Armand Carrel (an odd couple) were the only Frenchmen for whom he had “une véritable admiration.”50 Yet Tocqueville was the more solicitous of their friendship, Mill more elusive than Tocqueville’s other English friends and correspondents. Again Mill’s notice of the third and fourth volumes of Démocratie, though it appeared in October 1840 at a moment when Anglo-French relations were strained almost to the point of rupture, was graciously received, and the remark of Royer-Collard Edition: current; Page: [xvii] next year that it was “un ouvrage original” passed on to the reviewer.51 But Mill told Tocqueville, “you have so far outrun me that I am lost in the distance,” and that it would take him time to sort out what he could accept from what would require further explanation. “In any case you have accomplished a great achievement: you have changed the face of political philosophy. . . . I do not think that anything more important than the publication of your book has happened even in this great age of events. . . .” It would be read even “in this stupid island.”52 To others, however, he remarked that French philosophers had created “almost a new French language,” that Tocqueville was “really abstruse,” and that he found it “tough work reviewing him, much tougher than I expected.”53 Nevertheless, looking back, he decided that his own thought had “moved more and more in the same channel” as Tocqueville’s, and that his “practical political creed” over the quarter century had been modified as a result.54

In the case of the Saint-Simonians and Comte, Mill had been led through study of their works to reflect more fully on French public policy and the fate of opposition opinion. The correspondence with Tocqueville concentrated on the uncertain Franco-British relationship. In the vanguard of “insular” and “ignorant” English journalism, Mill early distinguished the Edinburgh Review, as he later insisted upon The Times. He said one could almost count the Englishmen who were “aware that France has produced any great names in prose literature since Voltaire and Rousseau.”55 Seeking his collaboration with the London Review, he told Tocqueville that politicians, publicists, and people “know about as much of France as they do of Timbuctoo.”56 The severity of his comparisons of the two nations was sometimes exaggerated. Even as a boy, he claimed, he had felt “the contrast between the frank sociability and amiability of French personal intercourse, and the English mode of existence in which everybody acts as if everybody else (with few, or no, exceptions) was either an enemy or a bore.”57 But this judgment, set down later in life, was much affected by his peculiar situation; close friends had been few and, as in J.A. Roebuck’s case, Mill’s feeling toward them had been at risk when they presumed to speak of his deepest attachment. Alexander Bain remarked that Mill himself did not show Edition: current; Page: [xviii] a “boundless capability of fellowship,” and it is clear that Tocqueville, sensitive in his own approaches, registered this reserve. Bain thought Mill dealt partially with France and the French, however, by comparison with England and the English.58 But if this bias did exist, it did not carry over into all matters; certainly not into foreign affairs. In private he was quite capable of turning the comparison to the advantage of his own people. Of Aristide Guilbert’s offer of an article for the London and Westminster Review, Mill commented that it “promises fair, but I have never found that a Frenchman’s promise to do anything punctually could be depended upon. They promise everything and do nothing. They are not men of business. Guilbert is better, being half an Englishman.”59 Public disputes between the two countries were not so lightly laughed off.

Mill himself was alive to the danger of too great a concentration of interest in another society. “I sometimes think,” he observed in his diary, “that those who, like us, keep up with the European movement, are by that very circumstance thrown out of the stream of English opinion and have some chance of mistaking and misjudging it.”60 The intense diplomatic crisis of 1839-4161 revealed clearly that he had by no means lost his native bearings. It marked the beginning of a profound difference between himself and Tocqueville which never was resolved; it showed a very real limitation to Mill’s capacity for evaluating the rights and wrongs of the old Anglo-French antagonism. He said he understood the sense of Edition: current; Page: [xix] humiliation that created the noisy popular demand for fortification of Paris: “This is foolish, but who can wonder at it in a people whose country has within this generation been twice occupied by foreign armies? If that were our case we should have plenty of the same feeling.”62 He bracketed Adolphe Thiers with Lord Palmerston as “the two most lightheaded men in Europe,” who had done “incalculable” evil and “rekindled” the old national antipathies.63 He was inclined to think that “that shallow & senseless coxcomb Palmerston” had unnecessarily challenged Thiers, that “no harm whatever to Europe would have resulted from French influence with Mehemet Ali, & it would have been easy to bind France against any future occupation of [Egypt] for herself.” However, the deed was done, and “this mischievous spirit in France” had been raised.64 And when Tocqueville put it to him that Thiers had had no alternative save to take a high line, and that the British government’s actions in isolating France and forcing her to accept war or humiliating retreat had been inexcusable, Mill stood firm. Culpable as the British government had been, he replied, it would not have acted so badly save for “such a lamentable want both of dignity & of common sense on the part of the journalists & public speakers in France,” “the signs of rabid eagerness for war, the reckless hurling down of the gauntlet to all Europe, the explosion of Napoleonism and of hatred to England, together with the confession of Thiers & his party that they were playing a double game, a thing which no English statesman could have avowed without entire loss of caste as a politician.” Still it was true, too, that he would “walk twenty miles to see [Palmerston] hanged, especially if Thiers were to be strung up with him.”65

This was not Tocqueville’s style. The disagreement here never was resolved. France, he said, was saddened and humiliated. He explained that the worst danger for any nation came when its moral fibre was weakened. After Thiers’ defiance, Guizot had been called in to give way, a large part of the middle class cravenly opted for peace and its own selfish interest. The result had been a sauveEdition: current; Page: [xx]qui peut, peace at any price. “Il faut,” he told Mill, “que ceux qui marchent à la tête d’une pareille nation y gardent toujours une attitude fière s’ils ne veulent laisser tomber très bas le niveau des moeurs nationales.” No nation could surrender its pride.66 Mill granted that, but delivered a lecture, too:

The desire to shine in the eyes of foreigners & to be highly esteemed by them must be cultivated and encouraged in France, at all costs. But, in the name of France & civilization, posterity have a right to expect from such men as you, from the nobler & more enlightened spirits of the time, that you should teach to your countrymen better ideas of what it is which constitutes national glory & national importance, than the low & grovelling ones which they seem to have at present—lower & more grovelling than I believe exist in any country in Europe at present except perhaps Spain.

In England, by contrast, “the most stupid & ignorant person” knew that national prestige followed from industry, good government, education, morality. The implication, of course, was that in France they did not. Mill’s countrymen, he added, saw French conduct as “simple puerility,” judging the French “a nation of sulky schoolboys.”

Considering what had happened in the eastern Mediterranean crisis, the sentiment is remarkable. Evidently he permitted himself to deliver this scolding because he prefaced it with a renewed declaration of sympathy for France, a country “to which by tastes & predilections I am more attached than to my own, & on which the civilization of Continental Europe in so great a degree depends.”67 Tocqueville absorbed it quietly. However, his public statement in the Chamber of Deputies, some months later, was no less firm. This in turn brought Lord Brougham to attack him in the House of Lords, and Mill, saddened to see Tocqueville included in the French “war party,” defended him in the Morning Chronicle.68 All the same, he thought fit to say to Tocqueville privately, “voyez ce qui est advenu de ce que nous avons eu, un seul instant, un homme à caractère français à notre Foreign Office.”69 Clearly Mill never understood Tocqueville’s concept of national prestige, or his fears for the health of the French national spirit; across more than a century thereafter, few Englishmen did: it remained an impenetrable mystery for most of them, and Mill, for all his francophilism, appeared scarcely better equipped to penetrate it. In the autumn of 1843, Tocqueville made one last reference to the continuing Franco-British tension in Europe and around the world, uncompromising but Edition: current; Page: [xxi] optimistic: “La trace des fautes commises par votre gouvernement en 1840 s’efface assez sensiblement.” He thought both the government and the people of the United Kingdom were seeking to draw closer to France and were having “une heureuse influence sur l’esprit public en France.” Mill having sent him his Logic, Tocqueville thanked him warmly, asking again whether Mill could not come to visit them. Mill made no further mention of the Mediterranean affair, thanked him, and asked whether Tocqueville would not come to England.70

Four years passed before they made contact briefly in 1847. They perceived the Revolution of 1848 very differently. Tocqueville had set his face against social revolution; February brought misgivings, and the insurrection in June seemed to him inevitable. Mill could never have used the words Tocqueville chose to characterize the desperate challenge from the streets flung at the government and the National Assembly.71 In the parliamentary debate on a constitution for the new Republic, Tocqueville argued for a second chamber. Mill took a contrary view of the matter. Moreover, he favoured inclusion of the droit au travail in the constitution, and to this Tocqueville was opposed Between them still was their disagreement on foreign policy: on 30 November, 1848, Tocqueville indicted Great Britain and Russia for conspiring to bar France from the eastern Mediterranean, saying he preferred war to humiliation.72 What Mill thought of Tocqueville’s brief but pacific tenure as Foreign Minister, June-October 1849, one must guess.

When their nine years’ silence was broken by Tocqueville in June 1856, he was graceful, slightly formal: “Voilà bien longtemps, mon cher Monsieur Mill, que nous avons perdu la bonne habitude de correspondre.” He reiterated his compliments and his “sentiments de vieille amitié.” Mill replied six months later (though he had been on holiday for no more than three months following arrival of the letter), thanking “cher Monsieur de Tocqueville” for sending his L’ancien régime et la révolution, praising it (“Envisagé seulement comme un chapitre Edition: current; Page: [xxii] d’histoire universelle, il me paraît un des plus beaux qu’on ait jamais fait . . .”), saying he had not wished to write until he had read it through twice. Of public affairs Mill noted only that the book’s “noble amour de la liberté” was a permanent reproach to “le triste régime que votre grande patrie, l’oeil droit du monde, est réduite à subir dans ce moment.” By return of post, Tocqueville replied, barely revealing his slight hurt: “J’avais été un peu chagriné de votre silence, avant que ses causes ne m’eussent été expliquées,” adding that no one else’s opinion was more precious. He would gladly write of politics, but he feared his letter would be seized. “Ne m’oubliez pas entièrement,” he concluded, “c’est tout ce que je réclame de vous en ce moment.”73 Mill appears to have been silent. Two years later, he sent Tocqueville his On Liberty. Tocqueville replied at once, warmly addressing him again as “Mon cher Mill,” as he had used to do years before.74 There seems to have been no reply.

Critical as Mill was of the English ruling class, he laid the principal blame for Anglo-French misunderstandings at the French doorstep. The French “character”, he told Robert Fox, was “excitable,” unstable, “& accordingly alternates between resentment against England and Anglomania.” Palmerston might make the occasion, but the underlying cause was the “mischievous spirit in France.” D’Eichthal was treated to some home truths: “It is impossible not to love the French people & at the same time not to admit that they are children—whereas with us even children are care-hardened men of fifty. It is as I have long thought a clear case for the croisement des races.” If the two nations avoided war, it was thanks to English indifference. “Heureusement,” he told Tocqueville in 1843, “notre public ne s’occupe jamais d’affaires étrangères. Sans cela l’Europe serait toujours en feu. . . .”75 However much Mill was drawn to the culture of France, he reacted to collisions of national sentiment as an Englishman. Nevertheless, if inevitably he was an outsider, he was also a deeply informed and committed observer, looking for fresh signs and portents. France remained a mirror, in it he continued to see much of what he thought best in European civilization.

This was true even during “le triste régime” of Napoleon III. In the summer of 1857, long before the substantial dismantling of the authoritarian Empire began, Mill discerned stirrings in the general elections that returned eight independents and five republicans, despite the fact that 84.6% of the vote went to official government candidates.76 Over-optimistic after 1860, he exaggerated signs of the devolution of authority and felt consoled by “the wonderful resurrection of the spirit of liberty in France, combined with a love of peace which even Edition: current; Page: [xxiii] sympathy with Poland does not prevail over.”77 He was not entirely wrong in this, but he mistook a particular for the general phenomenon. Like most observers, he did not sense on the tranquil eve of the Imperial catastrophe that the republican party, which he favoured, was potentially a great force.78 The war of 1870 was a surprise.

Believing that Prussia was fighting for her own liberty and for Europe’s. Mill called for “many” demonstrations against Bonaparte and advocated preparations for war since England’s “turn must come” if the Prussians were defeated. For the French people he expressed sorrow; it was Napoleon’s war. All the same, it was time that France drew the consequences of her situation: “elle devra se contenter d’être l’une des grandes puissances de l’Europe, sans prétendre à être la seule, ou même la première. . . .”79 Like others, he thought Gladstone could have prevented one “of the wickedest acts of aggression in history,”80 but the specific guilt was clear. If the “ignorant” French people were to be pitied, the “whole writing, thinking, & talking portion of the people” was not.81 It was of this élite that he thought when he said France had deliberately sought war because “she could not bear to see Germany made powerful by union” and that she should therefore be punished. Admitting after the military disaster that no one had anticipated so swift a collapse, he still insisted that “to those who knew France there was nothing surprising in it when it came. I hope it will tend to dispel the still common delusion that despotism is a vigorous government. There never was a greater mistake.”82 A certain hardness of tone had crept in.

In the aftermath of the Commune, Mill denounced Thiers’s savage treatment of Paris: “The crimes of the parti de l’ordre are atrocious, even supposing that they are in revenge for those generally attributed to the Commune.” He feared Edition: current; Page: [xxiv] repression would produce still another explosion, whereas France needed a policy of limited social experimentation.83 But seeing the strong republican tide coming in from the summer of 1871 on, hoping for a federalist government, he took heart. With his new friend, Louis Blanc, still embittered over the outcome of 1848, Mill disagreed about the new republicanism; he did not think (as Thornton had reported Blanc did) that the peasantry were contributing to it “in the same un-intelligent way in which they were lately imperialists.” Rather, he accepted the judgment of his stepdaughter that the key to this phenomenon of growing republican strength was the lay schoolmaster.84 As for the then fashionable talk about France’s decadence, Mill did not venture to pronounce on the matter. He thought moral decadence the only real form. It was true that “le caractère français a de très grands défauts, qui ne [se] sont jamais plus montrés que dans l’année malheureuse qui vient de s’écouler,” but he supposed it had been much the same in what were called “les plus beaux jours de la France.” What worried him was that the quality of discourse seemed defective; he detected “l’insuffisance intellectuelle de la génération présente pour faire face aux difficiles et redoutables problèmes d’un avenir qui a l’air d’être très prochain.”85

By then his virtually lifelong French education was drawing to a close. It had accounted for three or four shifts of direction in his intellectual journey. It made him both an enthusiast and a severe critic. Though he knew very well the land he found so dramatic and so consolatory, lived there a fair portion of his life, and chose to lie there forever, he remained what he had always been since the age of fourteen, an observer with his French notebook open, but with a primarily English agenda. It pained him, as it had Saint-Simon long before, that the two peoples should get along so poorly. “There is something exceedingly strange & lamentable,” he remarked to his most enduring French friend, “in the utter incapacity of our two nations to understand or believe the real character & springs of action of each other.”86

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MILL AND HISTORY

mill’s life coincided with the rise of the modern historical profession. The origins of the new history lie in the eighteenth century, in the work of both the “philosophical” historians who sought pattern and meaning, and the “critical” historians who began the search for sources and their collection and evaluation. At Mill’s birth, the state of history was far from brilliant. The archives were neglected and disarranged, the libraries were unwelcoming.87 In 1800, Madame de Staël had noted “la médiocrité des Français comme historiens.” On the eve of the Imperial defeat, Chateaubriand remarked how strange it was “comme cette histoire de France est tout à faire, et comme on s’en est jamais douté.”88 Napoleon, of course, had done little to encourage serious historical studies. The Revolution before him had set about the organization of its archives under the direction of the Jansenist politician Armand Camus; Bonaparte in turn appointed the professor, politician, and former cleric Pierre Daunou to continue the work at the national and departmental levels, and although Daunou was no special friend of the Empire, he lent his scholarly abilities to the defence of the régime when Napoleon’s purposes and prejudices coincided with his own. The Emperor conceived of written history as a political and social instrument: Pierre Edouard Lemontey was directed to write a history of France from the death of Louis XIV to demonstrate the decadence of the Bourbon monarchy. Historians had to be “trustworthy men who will present the facts in their true light and offer healthy instruction by leading the reader up to the year 8.” Those who conceived the task differently would not be “encouraged by the police.”89 The immediate inheritance of the Bourbon Restoration was meagre.

In England the situation, though different, was no better. Mill’s reiterated complaints were justified. The universities were, and were to remain until after the mid-century, largely uninterested in modern history. In the uncatalogued depositories, whether Westminster Abbey’s chapter-house or the Tower of Edition: current; Page: [xxvi] London, rats and mice went about their casual destruction. Foreign scholars who came calling were appalled. The Society of Antiquaries, founded in 1751, was unconcerned. The Record Commission Gibbon had asked for, established in 1800, was largely made up of Anglican divines and politicians, uninterested, incompetent. Sir James Mackintosh, appointed to it in 1825, was its first historians. Not until Sir Harris Nicolas, a former naval officer and barrister turned antiquarian, revealed the research conditions he had experienced in editing Nelson’s letters did anyone pay attention. In 1830, addressing himself to the Home Secretary, Lord Melbourne, Nicolas declared the existing history of England “not merely imperfect and erroneous but a discredit to the country, for almost every new document proves the current histories false. Scarcely a statement will bear the test of truth.”90 His evidence in 1836 before the Select Committee, chaired by Mill’s friend Charles Buller, was instrumental in bringing about the replacement of the indolent Record Commission. Then, with the establishment of the Public Record Office in 1838, the work of collecting and preserving the nation’s archives seriously began. But the mid-century passed before the kind of collection and publication of sources Guizot directed under the July Monarchy was started in England.

History, often the mere servant of philosophy and policy, was the concern of the very few. All the same, a profound change had set in, outgrowth of the Enlightenment, consequence of the Revolution.91 A new desire to know the past was abroad, to find a legitimating past to sanction the present. By the time John Mill was choosing his own reading, the French and German historical fields were alive with érudits and writers. He classified history as part of his “private reading.” He said it had been his “strongest predilection, and most of all ancient history.” His father having alerted him to the problem of bias in history, he had read critically from the first. Naturally he had also written histories—of India, of the ancient world, of Holland. At ten he began what he hoped would be a publishable history of Roman government, but he abandoned the project and destroyed the manuscript.92

If history had been his strongest “predilection” as a child, its attractions for him weakened. It was never at the centre of his adult activity. Whether it was a hobby93 is debatable; the evidence is not strong. But Mill read history, reflected on history, principally the history of Europe. History in general he defined as Edition: current; Page: [xxvii] “the record of all great things which have been achieved by mankind.”94 The history of Europe was peculiarly instructive because “among the inhabitants of our earth, the European family of nations is the only one which has ever yet shown any capability of spontaneous improvement, beyond a certain low level.”95 After 1826 his interest shifted steadily toward the philosophy of history and discovery of the laws governing human progress. Still severe in criticism of those whose scholarly standards failed his test, he became bent on the subordination of history to philosophy, seeking principles from historical facts, interpreting facts in the light of principles. He was sure all history was in its “infancy.” What passed for history “till near the present time,” he said in 1836, was “almost entirely useless in fact.” But a great change had set in: “intelligent investigation into past ages, and intelligent study of foreign countries” had begun. Almost two decades later, he again remarked on

how new an art that of writing history is, how very recently it is that we possess histories, of events not contemporary with the writer, which, apart from literary merit, have any value otherwise than as materials; how utterly uncritical, until lately, were all historians, even as to the most important facts of history, and how much, even after criticisms had commenced, the later writers merely continued to repeat after the earlier.96

The convention that history should be in the narrative form he dismissed with the observation that “it is as much the historian’s duty to judge as to narrate, to prove as to assert.” Moreover, where the requisite materials were missing, “a continuous stream of narrative” was impossible. Showing some inclination to dismiss narrative as “an amusing story,”97 he nevertheless remarked of Grote’s History of Greece, “Wherever the facts, authentically known, allow a consecutive stream of narrative to be kept up, the story is told in a more interesting manner than it has anywhere been told before, except in the finest passages of Thucydides. We are indeed disposed to assign to this history almost as high a rank in narrative as in thought.”98 But it was “thought,” not narrative, that concerned Mill. In a system of education, history, “when philosophically studied,” would offer “a certain largeness of conception,” permitting the student to realize completely “the great principles by which the progress of man and the condition of society are governed.”99 Mill did not unduly prize historiography; at best, for him, it was the first step toward a proper understanding of the past. Edition: current; Page: [xxviii] Niebuhr may have effected “a radical revolution” in Roman history, and Grote may have rescued Greek history from hitherto superficial examination, but Mill’s object in studying the past was less historiographical than sociological.100 The past existed to be made use of. It was the present that concerned him, or the present in history, what he called “the most important part of history, and the only part which a man may know and understand, with absolute certainty, by using the proper means.” The past itself was no guide to the present: “the present alone affords a fund of materials for judging, richer than the whole stores of the past, and far more accessible.”101 At best, then, history, like travel, was “useful in aid of a more searching and accurate experience, not in lieu of it. No one learns any thing very valuable from history or from travelling, who does not come prepared with much that history and travelling can never teach.” History’s value “even to a philosopher” is “not so much positive as negative”: it teaches “little” but is “a protection against much error.” Conversely, since one could not know other people and other ages as well as one knows one’s own, knowledge of the present age could help in interpreting the past and in making “a faithful picture” of earlier people and modes of existence, and in assigning “effects to their right causes.”102

Mill was concerned with the present in historical context, hence his immediate attraction to the historical periodizations of the Saint-Simonians and Comte. They persuaded him that the early nineteenth century was “an age of transition.”103Edition: current; Page: [xxix] In such an age, the old doctrines and institutions no longer responded to current needs; contradictory voices spoke; the old authorities clung to power; the new men struggled to take over in “a moral and social revolution.” This process had “been going on for a considerable length of time in modern Europe,” but the present moment was crucial. The authority, the legitimacy of the old institutions, lay and religious, had vanished. Change, the “progress” of “civilization,” could be resisted temporarily—Bonaparte had done that—but the process was ultimately irresistible: “The revolution which had already taken place in the human mind, is rapidly shaping external things to its own forms and proportions.”104

As a social scientist, Mill found the intelligible historical unit in the “State of Society,” which he defined as “the simultaneous state of all the greater social facts or phenomena.” He concluded that such states, or ages, were linked causally. The task was “to find the laws according to which any state of society produces the state which succeeds it and takes its place.” He thought the evidence proved that this succession took place not, as Vico had proposed, in “an orbit or cycle,” but in “a trajectory or progress.” Progress did not necessarily imply “improvement,” but the “general tendency” was and would continue to be “towards a better and happier state.” French thinkers, he remarked, hoped from mere historical analysis to discover “the law of progress” which would permit prediction of the future. But by such means they could at best discover some rough “empirical law,” not “a law of nature.” Comte had shown that the principal social phenomena changed from age to age, particularly from generation to generation. He alone had seen that man’s condition and actions were increasingly the result of “the qualities produced in [him] by the whole previous history of humanity.” Only when generalizations from history were properly linked with “the laws of human nature” would historical study reveal “Empirical Laws of Society.”105

The key to unlocking the secret of progress was intellect, “the state of the speculative faculties of mankind; including the nature of the beliefs which by any means they have arrived at, concerning themselves and the world by which they are surrounded.” Intellect and knowledge made possible both material advances and social unity; each new mode of social thought was the primary agent in shaping the society where it appeared (society itself created that thought only in a secondary manner). Hence Mill’s conclusion that human progress depended mainly on “the law of the successive transformation of human opinions.” Comte alone had tried to determine that law. Whatever the results to date, Mill believed that historical enquiry covering “the whole of past time, from the first recorded condition of the human race, to the memorable phenomena of the last and present Edition: current; Page: [xxx] generations” was the method “by which the derivative laws of social order and of social progress must be sought.” With this instrument, men could see “far forward into the future history of the human race,” determine how and how much “to accelerate the natural progress in so far as it is beneficial,” and to fend off those perils that even genuine progress entailed. So history was to serve “the highest branch of speculative sociology” and “the noblest and most beneficial portion of the Political Art.” A glittering vista of science and art stretched ahead, united to complete “the circle of human knowledge.”106

Some twenty years after he had formally stated this view of things (1843), Mill denied the charge that his doctrine implied “overruling fatality.” He said that “universal experience” showed that human conduct could be accounted for not only by “general laws” but by “circumstances” and “particular characters” also. The will of “exceptional persons” might be “indispensable links in the chain of causation by which even the general causes produce their effects.” Taking issue with Macaulay on the role of the great man, somewhat relaxing his claim for the predictive capability announced in 1843, he proposed in 1862:

The order of human progress . . . may to a certain extent have definite laws assigned to it, while as to its celerity, or even as to its taking place at all, no generalization, extending to the human species generally, can possibly be made; but only some very precarious approximate generalizations, confined to the small portion of mankind in whom there has been anything like consecutive progress within the historical period, and deduced from their special position, or collected from their particular history.

To an extreme degree, ancient Greece showed the extraordinary influence of a single city-state and a few exceptional individuals. The experience would not be repeated. Mill stood by his view, derived from Comte, that with the progress of civilization the influence of chance and character must decline: “the increasing preponderance of the collective agency of the species over all minor causes is constantly bringing the general evolution of the race into something which deviates less from a certain and pre-appointed track.”107 Comte had been “free from the error of those who ascribe all to general causes, and imagine that neither casual circumstances, nor governments by their actions, nor individuals of genius by their thoughts, materially accelerate or retard human progress,” but neither he nor Mill committed “the vulgar mistake” of imagining that men of action or of thought could “do with society what they please.”108

Mill was interested in history for what it could do rather than for what it might be. And what he called “historical science” was becoming more tractable, not only because historians were more inquiring, or more skilful, but because Edition: current; Page: [xxxi] “historical science” itself was changing: “in every generation, it becomes better adapted for study.”109 The past properly understood, as the raw material for the science of society, was taking shape. Helped by “the historical school of politicians” in France (and, he said, in Germany),110 Mill had moved on to Comte and a serviceable philosophy of history. More than thirty years later he would still say, “We find no fundamental errors in M. Comte’s general conception of history.”111

Mill seems not to have had the temperament to be an historian. After 1830, especially, his interests drew him along another path. John Carlyle rated him “a strange enthusiast with many capabilities but without much constancy of purpose.” Thomas Carlyle was breezily patronizing: “a fine clear Enthusiast, who will one day come to something. Yet to nothing Poetical, I think, his fancy is not rich; furthermore he cannot laugh with any compass.”112 The estimate appears to cut across his own proposal two years later that Mill should write a history of the French Revolution. This had certainly seemed to be Mill’s intention. He had collected materials, made himself expert. He told Carlyle that he had “many times” thought of writing such a history, “it is highly probable that I shall do it sometime if you do not,” but he saw two obstacles:

the difficulty of doing so tolerably . . . [and the] far greater difficulty of doing it so as to be read in England, until the time comes when one can speak of Christianity as it may be spoken of in France; as by far the greatest and best thing which has existed on this globe, but which is gone, never to return, only what was best in it to reappear in another and still higher form, some time (heaven knows when). One could not, now, say this openly in England, and be read—at least by the many; yet it is perhaps worth trying. Without saying out one’s whole belief on that point, it is impossible to write about the French Revolution in any way professing to tell the whole truth.113

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The two comments were apposite: Carlyle judged Mill incapable of an empathetic reading of the evidence and an imaginative reconstruction of the explosive and deeply mysterious episode he conceived the Revolution to have been;114 Mill’s own interest in the Revolution had altered: it was no longer the storehouse of wisdom for the radical reform movement, but an integral part of, a critical episode in, the development of civilization toward the understanding of which he and others were only beginning to move. His preoccupation was to say “one’s whole belief,” “to tell the whole truth.” The remark that it was “perhaps worth trying” revealed his diminishing purpose to write history.

Mill wanted to write about history, to philosophize about it, to subordinate the facts of history to “principles,” to extract instruction from history. Drawn naturally to France from his boyhood experience, he saw clearly that French history offered a potentially rich field for the exploration of the interplay of character, circumstance, thought, and great impersonal forces and tendencies. He would echo Guizot in saying, “A person must need instruction in history very much, who does not know that the history of civilization in France is that of civilization in Europe” (230 below).115 Reading the young French liberal historians, he was impelled not to write like them but to write about them, to make use of them, to extract the moral from them. He would like, as he told Macvey Napier, “to write occasionally on modern French history & historical literature, with which from peculiar causes I am more extensively acquainted than Englishmen usually are.”116 He prided himself on his broad reading in the subject as forthrightly as he disapproved of his fellow countrymen who knew nothing of it. He believed it a scandal that “while modern history has been receiving a new aspect from the labours of men who are not only among the profoundest thinkers, . . . the clearest and most popular writers of their age, even those of their works which are expressly dedicated to the history of our own Edition: current; Page: [xxxiii] country remain mostly untranslated and in almost all cases unread.”117 Unlike the productions of narrative historians,118 their histories of revolution, whether of France in 1789 or of England in 1688, were a significant part of the literature of political and social commitment under the Bourbons. Mill had seen this before 1830, and he was as clear about it after. The history of France, he remarked about the mid-century, was “perhaps the most [interesting] & certainly the most instructive in so far as history is ever so.”119

By then, Mill had long since abandoned whatever intention he had formerly had of contributing to the history of the Revolution. His task was not historiography but commentary and historical speculation: the search for a science of history. The European tendency, he wrote in 1836, “towards the philosophic study of the past and of foreign civilizations, is one of the encouraging features of the present time.” A similar tendency was perceptible even in England, “the most insular of all the provinces of the republic of letters.”120

DULAURE AND SISMONDI

with dulaure and sismondi Mill was reaching back into the pre-Revolutionary generations where the origins of the liberal historical interpretation lay. In 1826, Jacques Antoine Dulaure was seventy-one years old. After 1789, he had quickly turned his pen against the old régime with a volume detailing the crimes and follies of the aristocracy.121 A sometime member of the Cordelier and Jacobin clubs, he had sat in the Convention with the Girondins, though he was an independent deputy from Puy-de-Dôme. He voted for the death penalty for Louis XVI and defended Madame Roland before fleeing to asylum in Switzerland. Returning in 1795, he became an agent of the Directory in Corrèze and the Dordogne until his opposition to Bonaparte on 18 Brumaire ended his political career. During the Hundred Days, he used his pen against the Emperor. He Edition: current; Page: [xxxiv] was thus congenial to Mill as an early member of “the historical school of politicians.”

By contrast, Charles Simonde (who assumed the additional Italian form de Sismondi), fifty-three years old in 1826, a Protestant pastor’s son and a citizen of Geneva, had a more unhappy experience of the Revolution. Apprenticed in Lyon in 1792, he returned home almost immediately, only to be driven to England by the Revolutionary coup at the end of the year. Returning home again in 1794, he and his family soon fled to a farm near Lucca. But the ebb and flow of revolution and reaction there put him in prison three times before 1800, when he went back to Geneva.122 He wrote an Histoire des républiques italiennes du moyen âge before determining in May 1818 to write the history of France, an immense enterprise of twenty-nine volumes that occupied him to the eve of his death in 1841. Like Dulaure, Sismondi had not been sorry to see Napoleon humbled in 1814, but his loyalties were confused in the chassé-croisé of that uncertain moment (he had been on the government’s books in 1810 for a 2000 franc subvention).123 Nor was he favourable to the Bourbons. But he had returned to Paris in 1813, and had made the acquaintance of the liberal politician Benjamin Constant. An intimate friend of Germaine de Staël, Constant had bitterly attacked the Emperor. Yet on Bonaparte’s return from Elba, Constant permitted the infinitely resourceful Fouché to persuade him to take a seat on the Conseil d’état and to produce the Acte additionnel of 22 April, 1815, a liberal supplement to and modification of the Imperial system, which pleased few and was accepted by Napoleon (who would have abandoned it had the decision at Waterloo not gone against him) as an exercise in public relations. Sismondi’s relations with Constant must explain his defence of the document, for which the Emperor rewarded him with a long interview. Not unreasonably, therefore, the news from Belgium after 18 June led Sismondi to return to Geneva. Madame de Staël remained friendly, but other friends were cool.124 Mill seems not to have held this Bonapartist flirtation, supposing he knew of it, against Sismondi. The main thing was that the preface of his Histoire showed an earnest commitment to social progress: “En rassemblant les souvenirs nationaux, c’est moins à la réputation des morts qu’au salut des vivans que nous devons songer.”125 Liberty was his passion. Perhaps less awkwardly than Dulaure, Sismondi could be made to fit the conception of “philosophical historian” Mill came to hold.

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Mill’s review of the works of these two men was a vehicle for taking aim at aristocracy, church, monarchy, and the conservative historiography perpetuating the myth of chivalry. Characteristically, he began with an ironical cut at the Quarterly Review and his fellow countrymen who had yet to discover the superiority of other nations in certain matters, specifically literature and history. The starkest contrast was drawn between pre- and post-Revolutionary studies: mere ornament and frivolousness, the mark of literature in “every country where there is an aristocracy,” having yielded to earnest regard for truth in the flood of important histories since 1821. A cascade of generalized scorn for previous historians of France set off the merits of Dulaure and Sismondi with their scrupulous regard for “facts” (17). Like most historians then and later, Mill did not trouble to consider seriously what a historical fact might be. The unquestioned assumptions of the critical method in historiography are apparent in his magisterial commentaries.

Lest readers mistake his purpose, he laid bare the object and conclusion of his examination at the outset, namely, proof that “the spirit of chivalry” was almost unknown in the Middle Ages (20). Rather, it was a set of ideals in the rough and tumble of a time, marked by depravity and misery, whose noble class was the antithesis of civilization. His allusion to the persistence of the knightly state of mind in the nineteenth century was not subtle. Though claiming high regard for objective fact, Mill fell back upon the “hue and cry” of Dulaure’s French conservative critics as proof of Dulaure’s reliability (21). Almost simultaneously, he attacked defenders of the English status quo. In short, it was quickly apparent that Mill had some trouble keeping his mind on the remote past. He confined himself principally to France, he explained, because “the feudal system never existed in its original purity, in England” and because no English historian had yet, like Dulaure, undertaken “the toilsome and thankless service of dragging into light the vices and crimes of former days” (26). His description of feudal society emphasized the “perpetual civil war,” the cruelties visited by kings and aristocrats on the people (28). He noted that in England “it has been the interest of the powerful, that the abominations of the clergy in the middle ages should be known” (32), but also that in reality they had been less heinous than those of the barons. With the aid of Dulaure’s and Sismondi’s narratives, he challenged the latter-day descendants of what he took to be a barbarous aristocracy and the new “romantic” historians. Vigilant against the conservative implications of sentimentalizing the Middle Ages, he hailed the enthusiasm for history of which romanticism was nevertheless a powerful component. He distinguished, in short, between “nostalgic historiography and historiography which restored,”126 chiding those who could not or would not do so—“Even Mr. Hallam does not believe in the reality of knights-errant . . .” (34).

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Mill’s Middle Ages were nearly an unrelieved catalogue of aristocratic and monarchical wrongdoing. The most glamorous actors, such as Richard Coeur de Lion, were brought to book in light of the misdeeds chronicled by Dulaure and Sismondi (34). Only with the appearance of “a sort of public opinion” once the national power came into being, he argued, was there any improvement of noble conduct (42). Urban privileges had to be wrung from a perfidious feudal class. The only luminous figure Mill perceived in a dark landscape was Saint Louis, “a perfect specimen of a mind governed by conviction; a mind which has imperfect and wrong ideas of morality, but which adheres to them with a constancy and firmness of principle, in its highest degree perhaps the rarest of all human qualities” (44).

Approaching the subject that subsequently became important to him, he considered the question of gallantry to which he attributed “nine-tenths of the admiration of chivalry” (45). It amounted to mere male vanity; the idolatry of women marked a “low state of civilization” (46). If the few were set on pedestals, the many were disregarded in a world of mistreatment and rape. In time, the aristocracy gave up its independent power, but not its masculine conceits and illusions; it never reformed itself. Thanks to works like Dulaure’s and Sismondi’s, the French at least would be disabused about the romanticized past. Unhappily, there were no English equivalents. Hallam was granted some measure of “liberality” in his discussion of the Middle Ages (52), but he had been taken in by legend and was without philosophy; if he knew the sources and had something to say about English constitutional history, his work was judged “a sketch of one of the most remarkable states of society ever known, at once uninstructive and tiresome.” His volumes were “an utter failure” (52).127

The breathtaking judgments the young Mill handed out, founded more on a philosophy of history than on close acquaintance with research, may not seem entirely off the mark. But that his reading was openly inquisitive might be difficult to show. François Mignet, whom he much admired, would, like historians since, point to Sismondi’s attention to the effect of economic change in history,128 an emphasis Mill appears not to have noticed. Nor did he comment on the inflexibility of the moral code Sismondi applied to his thirteen centuries, possibly because he then still shared the assumption. It was revealing that only at the end of his review did Mill draw attention to the lack in Dulaure of a generalizing, that is, of a philosophical mind: he states the facts as he finds them, praises and censures where he sees reason, but does not look out for causes and effects, or parallel instances, or apply the general principles of human nature to the state of society he is describing, to show from what circumstances it became Edition: current; Page: [xxxvii] what is was. It is true he does not profess to be a historian, but only to sketch a tableau moral (51). Reading this from another pen, Mill might have said, “On croit rêver!” By nearly every test he would normally apply, Dulaure should have failed almost as absolutely as Henry Hallam. The secret, however, was in the point of view.

Sismondi offered more generalizations, if not more philosophical reflection, and sustained the underlying assumption of Mill’s review. Showing movement if little colour, his long narrative continued to appear for years after the first volumes Mill surveyed. Its principal value lay in the sources brought together. But the verdict was to be that the first three volumes, the historical event of 1821, Camille Jullian said, were the best of it. They were received by both the philosophic and the romantic schools, welcomed by Augustin Thierry and Guizot. Even Michelet was said to have remarked of Sismondi, “notre père à tous.”129 Mill was not wrong to single him out.

MILL AND THE REVOLUTION OF 1789

mill encountered the French Revolution shortly after his return from France in 1821. He learned that “the principle of democracy” had triumphed a generation earlier to become “the creed of a nation.” This revelation made sense of fragmented melodramatic events, all he had known of the matter, and sustained all his “juvenile aspirations to the character of a democratic champion.” He imagined himself caught up in a similar revolution, “a Girondist in an English Convention.”130 If the recollection across three decades was accurate, it might seem unexceptional, were it not that Mill’s identification with the Girondins was an assertion of independence from his father, who dismissed the Revolution as “some kind of ruffians in the metropolis [being] allowed to give laws to the whole nation.”131 Lamartine was to colour the confused tragedy of the Girondins in 1847, but their drama was known long before. Their neo-classical poses and search for glory may well have appealed to John Mill. He would have met them in François Toulongeon’s Histoire de France depuis la révolution de 1789,132 and learned that they supported a republic only after the abolition of the Edition: current; Page: [xxxviii] monarchy. In Madame de Staël’s Considérations sur les principaux événemens de la révolution française, he would have seen them less heroically.133 What is sure is that the liberal historians of the 1820s took them as champions; the sympathetic treatment by Thiers and Mignet may have confirmed in the mind of the memorialist the germ of the thought held by the boy of fifteen.

There is no evidence that Mill thought before the second half of the 1820s of writing a history of the Revolution. In his review of Mignet in April 1826, he alluded to documentary materials accessible in England, adding, “We purpose to lay some of them before our readers ere long” (5). Almost two years later he protested that “on est ici dans une si crasse ignorance sur la révolution, et tous, jusqu’aux individus les plus instruits, ont des idées tellement ridicules sur la nature de cette crise politique, qu’avec mon peu de lumières et de connaissance des faits j’ai crû pouvoir faire quelque chose pour dessiller les yeux de mes compatriotes.” Claiming to know almost everything from the standard histories and the published memoirs, he asked Charles Comte to recommend further materials on royalist intentions before the flight to Varennes. But beyond “quelques articles,” he mentioned no larger project, although, he added, “je ne vois guère que moi en angleterre qui rendent justice à la révolution.”134 The collection of books and materials he had, however, suggests that such was his intention. The years immediately preceding the collapse of the Bourbon monarchy showed no progress toward realizing this project, despite his detailed attack on Sir Walter Scott’s version of the Revolution. And it may be supposed that his “half formed intention of writing a History of the French Revolution”135 was steadily weakening as he was drawn toward the broad historical perspectives of the Saint-Simonians. His own explanation was that he was then digesting and maturing his thoughts “without any immediate call for giving them out in print,” and that had he “gone on writing” he “would have much disturbed the important transformation in [his] opinions and character, which took place in those years.”136 Perhaps the initial great enthusiasm he felt over the events of July 1830 stimulated his earlier ambitions to write a history, but the increasing disappointment he experienced in closely following the course of the new régime may well have confirmed his growing interest in a much larger view of the historical past, convinced him that the Saint-Simonians had properly seen beneath the surface events of political revolutions, and led once more to his letting 1789 slip away. Moreover, his encounter with Carlyle, whom he first met in September 1831, may also have affected his intent as it became clearer that Carlyle was becoming set on writing a history himself.

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To Carlyle’s statement that, despite the difficulty of writing, it was one of his “superstitions never to turn back,” and that thus one must “march on, & complain no more about it,” Mill responded in a minor key: he had the same thought. If he was to attempt “a general view of any great subject” he wished to say not merely “something true, but to omit nothing which is material to the truth.” The sole encouragement to undertake such a task was that “imperfect and dim light” was still better than “total darkness.” His long rumination betrayed serious doubts about so immense a subject. He spoke of returning to work after a brief holiday, when he hoped to “produce something worthy of the title you give me,” but thought he was “rather fitted to be a logical expounder than an artist.” Still, there was work to be done in exposing the logical side of “Truth” before the poetic, and that he hoped to do.137

He was proposing Carlyle would do the great artistic history, while he could do only the analytical. Despite reservations about Mill’s literary capacity, Carlyle nevertheless urged him to set forth his “ideas and acquisitions” about the Revolution at greater length, for “It is properly the grand work of our era. . . .”138 But Carlyle was already moving toward his own French Revolution. Mill continued to remark, as he did to Tocqueville, “We have not so much as one readable history of the Revolution. . . .”139 but himself made no move to supply it. He may well not have had the time for it. Moreover, his growing attraction to French historical speculation was leading him steadily away from any such specific task. From the summer of 1832, he steadily despatched books from his own library and procured fresh materials for Carlyle. And, although he continued to reflect and comment on the Revolution from time to time, it was clear, long before Carlyle was in print, that Mill had abandoned even the glimmering of his former project.

MIGNET

However halting Mill’s resolve to write an analytical history became, he had been sufficiently motivated for the better part of a decade, and sufficiently convinced that such a study could be a vehicle by which to forward his argument in England, that he followed the literature and published four essays on as many of the Revolution’s historians. In this connection, Dulaure had been a transitional figure, useful to Mill (like Sismondi) principally for furnishing materials with which to challenge the romanticized version of the past. Not only were the Middle Ages brutal and strife-ridden, Mill concluded, but their feudal survivals in the eighteenth century were preposterous. In the young historians Adolphe Thiers and François Mignet he found the support he was looking for. They could Edition: current; Page: [xl] help him make his case against the ancien régime, broadly conceived, and on behalf of the liberal reformers of the Revolution’s early phase. Unencumbered by personal experience and memory, they did not linger over the reservations and dilemmas of the earlier liberal champions like Madame de Staël. They observed but were not embarrassed by the break between the liberal phase of the Revolution and the Terror. They accepted the challenge of the counter-revolution head-on. “Ecrivez, Messieurs, faites des livres,” Royer-Collard, leader of the doctrinaires, remarked when the liberal Decazes ministry fell following the duc de Berry’s assassination; “il n’y a pas autre chose à faire en ce moment.”140

In 1821 Thiers and Mignet appeared in Paris from the south. They were just twenty-four; the liberal opposition was warming up. With letters of introduction to Jacques Antoine Manuel, leader of the Chamber opposition, they made the acquaintance of this group, including Talleyrand, and established themselves in the opposition salons and press, Thiers at the Constitutionnel, Mignet at the Courrier Français. They were lawyers from the Faculté at Aix, attracted by history, Thiers the more politically ambitious, Mignet the more scholarly. Mignet had already obtained the couronne of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres for his memoir, Les institutions de saint Louis. Established as a lecturer at the Athénée, 1822-24, he discussed the Reformation and the English revolutions of the seventeenth century in such a way as left no doubt that he was attacking the Bourbon monarchy. Guizot had been silenced at the Sorbonne in 1822 for just this lèse-majesté; Mignet fell under no ban. But reaching for a wider audience, he, like Thiers,141 determined to write the history of the Revolution.

His two volumes were published in May 1824, offering in a single instalment the whole of the version Thiers served up at greater length over five years. It was less narrative than exposition, an analysis of a great event that worked itself out as it had to. After collecting materials for two years, Mignet had written his book rapidly in November-December 1823. Jules Simon proposed that Mignet might have said “ma révolution” (a boutade concerning 1830 incorrectly ascribed to Edition: current; Page: [xli] Thiers). Louis Halphen remarked that Mignet, like Thiers and (as would be said later on) Guizot, gave the impression “of having known from the beginning of time what [he] had just learned that morning.”142 The work was marked by the fatalisme historique distinguishing the liberal counter-offensive against the Ultra-royalist reaction, almost in response to Sismondi’s dictum that “l’étude des faits sans philosophie ne seroit pas moins décevante que celle de la philosophie sans faits.”143 It echoed, as Sainte-Beuve pointed out, Joseph de Maistre’s view of the Revolution as a great irresistible force.144 Accusing the aristocracy of the whole responsibility for the outbreak of the Revolution and all the ensuing violence, Mignet challenged not merely the régime and its supporters but also the old liberals who had agreed with Benjamin Constant that one must distinguish “those measures which [the government] had the right to take, from those crimes which they committed and which they did not have the right to commit.”145 It was the first complete history, “un tableau d’ensemble vivant et rapide, un résumé frappant, théorique, commode.” It had a huge success, with translations into five other languages.146

Mill’s review distinguished a greater degree of popular narrative in Mignet than some were inclined to, while underlining his subordination of history to “philosophy,” a characteristic of the “modern” style of historiography. Like Carlyle, he proclaimed Mignet “the highest specimen” of the new school, stated his agreement with the account, and once more berated the old narrative historians in England (4). In contrast to what Carlyle would later say, however, he approved Mignet’s skill in the selection and marshalling of details (4). Mill gave so much space to illustrative extracts that one has the feeling he had little to say. He made no comment on the uncritical handling of sources; or upon the use Mignet made of oral evidence; or upon the role of individuals within the controlling conditions of fatalisme historique. And he did not mention the Edition: current; Page: [xlii] conception of class struggle as a motor force.147 But, anticipating Carlyle, Mill was critical of the reflections which principally established the work in Revolutionary historiography and which made it, as Thiers is said to have thought of his own book, “une arme de guerre” against the Bourbons.148 If he was not affronted, as Constant was, by the global explanation of the whole Revolutionary experience, he was unimpressed by Mignet’s talent for generalization, an aptitude with which he considered Madame de Staël firmly endowed, even though her taste for dubious epigrams was still more marked (13). The result was a short, schoolmasterly reprimand, separating the faux brillants from the vrais. An entertaining story well told, the book would reveal to the English “what intelligent Frenchmen think and say on the subject of the French Revolution” (13-14). But this remark did not quite catch the controversial, essentially political nature of Mignet’s work.

Years later, in December 1861, Taine, who was no friend of “la vulgate de Thiers et de Mignet,”149 chanced to have a chat with Mignet whom he had not previously met. “Il y a un fonds de stérilité; on voit qu’il n’a pas vécu dans les idées générales, qu’il y est impropre,” he noted. “Il n’est pas artiste non plus, voyez son histoire de Marie Stuart, sa Révolution française; c’est glacé. Il est propre à digérer des matériaux indigestes, à exposer clairement, en bel ordre. Il a le talent français de la classification parfaite et de l’élégance noble académique,” but about les forces profondes, “il a l’air encore dépaysé.”150 By then, of course, Mignet had long since abandoned the political scene, having settled for the archives of the Foreign Ministry under the July Monarchy, and become secrétaire perpétuel of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques. Philosophical history as practised by the opposition literati under the Bourbon monarchy had become an historiographical artifact. But perhaps Mill had caught something of the limitation Taine perceived thirty-five years later.

Still it is true that Mignet’s Revolution was a youthful tour de force, part of a general movement that finally toppled the Bourbon monarchy. Whatever his criticisms, Mill had recognized its significance as a pièce d’occasion; by praising Mignet’s skill and achievement, he had early singled out an historian whose total work, some twenty volumes, would win the approval of scholars at home and abroad.151

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SCOTT

When Mignet arrived in Paris, the battle over romanticism was at its height, with Walter Scott at its centre. Mignet waited a year before making a statement, but the popular verdict was in: the reading public was entranced. The novels were translated into French beginning in 1816, and 200,000 copies were sold during Louis XVIII’s reign, 1.5 million by the end of Charles X’s. If Chateaubriand and others had pointed the way,152 Scott’s pre-eminence was established so rapidly that historians (whose audience in those days was the literate general public) greeted this voice with some approval. The earliest was Augustin Thierry, former secretary to Saint-Simon, a journalist, not yet the historian of the Norman Conquest, not quite so cautious as he would be later on. Of Scott’s books he said there was more true history in them than in “les compilations philosophiquement fausses” claiming the name of history. He discerned in Scott’s reading of the past “cette seconde vue que, dans les temps d’ignorance, certains hommes s’attribuent pour l’avenir.”153 He named it “divination historique.” Experience and time brought Thierry justifiably to rate his own historical gifts superior to Scott’s, but he conceived them as complementary spirits, and years after he was sufficiently secure to admit the fact.154

Mignet was initially spellbound: “Il faut le dire, Walter Scott est un des quatre premiers génies anglais; il se montre l’égal de Richardson, de Milton, de Shakespeare,” a man who knew how to infuse history with movement and vitality, how to identify the essential characteristics of an epoch. Reflection brought reserve. Scott, he concluded a little later, was more familiar with Scottish chronicles than with French: “Où sont nos villes, leurs corporations, leurs bourgeois, leurs quarteniers, leurs échevins? Où sont nos parlements . . . nos paysans? On connaît la cour de Louis XI, on ne connaît pas son siècle.”155 As the new historians made their way. Scott’s reputation with the French historians was qualified but not extinguished. He had shown them something essential; his reputation and influence remained greater with them than with English historians.156

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Mill was familiar with the French reception of Scott. His own experience did not predispose him to share it. As a child he had known “the metrical romances” his father recommended to him and been “intensely delighted” with their “animated narrative.” But when still in his teens, he had scathingly criticized Hume’s History as “really a romance,” bearing “nearly the same degree of resemblance to any thing which really happened, as Old Mortality, or Ivanhoe. . . . Romance is always dangerous, but when romance assumes the garb of history, it is doubly pernicious.”157 He continued to judge the novels harshly, for offering mere amusement. Scott, he declared later, had “no object but to please.” He neverthless granted that “at the height of his popularity” Scott “was breathing the breath of life into the historical literature of France, and, through France, of all Europe.”158 During the 1820s, however, he was not greatly impressed. The publication in June 1827 of Scott’s Life of Napoleon Buonaparte decided him to make a prolonged statement. His review, the last article he wrote for the Westminster Review in the 1820s, cost him “more labour than any previous; but it was a labour of love, being a defence of the early French Revolutionists against the Tory misrepresentations of Sir Walter Scott.” He even bought many books “for this purpose,” in numbers that “far exceeded the worth of the immediate object”; but, as we have seen, he “had at that time a half formed intention of writing a History of the French Revolution.”159

The review constitutes the nearest thing to a fully developed statement about the Revolution Mill ever set down. It was also a blistering attack on Scott. After a preliminary bow to his literary talent, Mill said the book “would be admirable as a romance” but was not history (55). Bonaparte’s life would require other talents. Mill’s subject, of course, was not Napoleon, but rather the nature of history, the distortions of Tory history, and a defence of the Girondins. Whatever his subject, however, a true historian must be “a philosopher,” able to render the facts of history useful by adducing principles from them and applying principles to explain them, a man of broad views and experience, able to weigh and link evidence, “a consummate judge” (56). In a word, “the historian” resembled considerably the continental philosophical historian and no other. Scott did not measure up: bland and aristocratic, hard-working, wishing to please all, he was finally judged to be a not entirely illiberal or disingenuous “advocate of the aristocracy against the people” (57). His social and political philosophy was summarized as “whatever is English is best; best, not for England only, but for every country in Christendom, or probably the world” (60). There followed a catalogue of his sins and errors: ignorant of the facts about France and the French, he had read few authorities, failed to understand circumstances, and was Edition: current; Page: [xlv] “not to be trusted” (63). At best, Scott saw “a part of the truth” but was “far too slightly acquainted with the monuments of the times, to have the faintest or most distant perception of it as a whole” (65). His pre-Revolutionary chapters were prejudiced and misleading; what followed was worse. His skilfully told story, doubtless sincerely intended, manipulated the facts in the cause of a theory that was not true. Still, Mill gave him this: the work was “less malignant” than most other Tory studies of the Revolution (110).

Mill’s view of the early Revolution, what he would call its “true history,” was in stark contrast to Scott’s. The Bonapartist episode he quickly dismissed as a vulgar coda, a familiar exercise of power by an adventurer moved by “the lowest impulses of the lowest description of human beings” (58). The Revolution was something else: a “vast convulsion,” originated, heroically defended, and at last ended by “the people” when they awoke from “the frenzy” into which the privileged orders had driven them by opposing “representative government” (58). As an unprecedented manifestation of popular will, it could not be judged by ordinary rules. Where Scott saw ambitious men seeking office, Mill saw patriots seeking liberty. Where Scott proposed the perverse nature of the lower orders running amok, Mill saw ordinary men driven to excess by injustice and oppression. Scott was granted the perceptiveness of glimpsing some part of the truth (for instance, about peasant-landlord ties in the Vendée), but accused of general failure to comprehend social relations under the ancien régime. Where Scott saw vicious, irreligious philosophes undermining society, Mill saw benefactors of mankind. Scott’s court was weak and ineffectual. Mill’s wicked and tyrannical. Mill was amused by the suggestion that the royal government might have forced the election results it needed, a course “so perfectly according to the English model” (72). Against Scott’s “conjuring up a republican party” (79), Mill argued there had been no such party, only varieties of constitutional monarchists in the Legislative Assembly until such time as both “the nullity of the Duke of Orleans as a politician” (81) and the perfidy of the King forced them to become republicans. Mill ridiculed Scott’s suggestion that the Revolution ought to have adopted something like the British constitution in the circumstances following the States General, when “the struggle was not for a revolution, but against a counter-revolution” (86). To Scott the Girondins were “philosophical rhapsodists” willing to use force to establish “a pure republic”; Mill exalted them as “the purest and most disinterested body of men, considered as a party, who ever figured in history,” statesmen who had war thrust on them, who laboured vainly to save the crown, and who were left with no alternative save a republic (98).

All this was put with passion (Scott was called “childish,” accused of “effrontery,” supposed to be suffering “mental hallucination” [68n, 69n, 79n]), buttressed by appeal to authorities of all persuasions. It was the liberal version of the early Revolution, stopping short of the Jacobin period that Mill found distasteful. If he had a clear overview, it was close to Mignet’s. But it was Edition: current; Page: [xlvi] significant that he did not push on beyond the early years. What concerned him was defence of the liberal champions of constitutional monarchy against an unscrupulous aristocracy, that is, defence of “the honest part of the revolutionists” against “the general opinion” in England that had done them (and, it went without saying, those in England who thought like them) more harm even than Scott (110). If Scott had a didactic purpose, Mill had nothing less. But he must be read in the context of an entrenched conservative historiography, deep-seated national prejudice against the French, and of course the struggle for reform of the House of Commons. He admitted that the Life contained “juster views” than those he particularly took issue with (110), though how they appeared in a writer so roundly declared unfit for the historian’s task he did not venture to explain.

Notoriously, Scott’s book was put together under great pressure, nine volumes in a year, amid many anxieties. He himself acknowledged some part of its limitation.160 Carlyle’s famous tribute was that Scott “taught all men this truth, which looks like a truism, and yet was as good as unknown to writers of history and others, till so taught: that the bygone ages of the world were actually filled with living men, not by protocols, state-papers, controversies and abstractions of men.” No doubt this was less true of the Life of Napoleon than of the historical novels. Perhaps Mill would, some years after he wrote his devastating review, have been more inclined to grant as much. His own views about the depths and poetry of history were changing. But he never found the words. Whether he could have accepted Carlyle’s posthumous verdict that Scott “understood what history meant; this was his chief intellectual merit,” one must guess.161

ALISON

Mill believed that the huge sales Scott enjoyed had a harmful effect on the public mind. But he also knew that Scott had made an important contribution to the Edition: current; Page: [xlvii] revival of written history, that he was dealing with not merely a pillar of the Tory establishment but a formidable man of letters. In taking on the work of Alison, however, he was jousting with a writer of more ordinary talents, if also of great industry, whose account of the Revolution was also Tory propaganda. What ultimately justified taking notice of such a study was, again, the immense sales Alison had both at home and, in translation, abroad. Of the whole multi-volume History of Europe from the Commencement of the French Revolution to the Restoration of the Bourbons, more than half a million copies were sold before his death, though at the time Mill could hardly have foreseen it would have such success.

A native of Shropshire who had early moved to Edinburgh where he took up the law, Alison became an advocate-deputy for Scotland, wrote books on the criminal law, and was eventually appointed sheriff of Lanarkshire. By the time he visited France in 1814-15, his conservative views were fixed. Leslie Stephen’s judgment that he was “intelligent and hard-working, if not brilliant,” is borne out by his numerous publications. He had defeated Macaulay in election as Lord Rector of Marischal College, Aberdeen, and Palmerston as Lord Rector of Glasgow. He was a believer in the institution of slavery, and later a strong supporter of the American Confederacy. His literary taste ran to “elevating” romances and against the Dickensian preoccupation with the manners of the middle and lower classes. He refused to “worship the Dagon of Liberalism.”162 He was very nearly everything Mill was not, their views could hardly have been more different, whether of the French Revolution or, late in life, the American Civil War: Alison supported the Confederacy, while Mill, “very retiring and embarrassed in his manner,” as Henry Adams noted, was “a mighty weapon of defence for our cause in this country.”163

Alison began his History on New Year’s Day 1829, intending to illustrate the corruption of human nature and the divine hand in events; his work was induced, he said, “by the clear perception that affairs were hurrying on to some great social and political convulsion in this country. The passion for innovation which had for many years overspread the nation, the vague ideas afloat in the public mind, the facility with which Government entered into these views—all these had awakened gloomy presentiments in my mind.”164 His first two volumes were published in April 1833.

As Alison had published a year-long series of articles in Blackwood’s on the French Revolution and the English reform issue in 1831-32. Mill knew what to Edition: current; Page: [xlviii] expect. But he inquired of Carlyle whether the book “is worth reading, or reviewing—I suppose it is wrong, when one has taken the trouble to accumulate knowledge on a subject, not to work it up if one can into some shape useful to others—and if I am to write about the F.R. it may as well be while my recollections of the original authorities are fresh.” Clearly Mill, though now far from sure that he wished to pursue his former intention to write a history and evidently yielding the ground to and actively assisting Carlyle, still wished to make a statement. He wished to pillory the errors, bias, and flaccid lack of philosophy he found in Alison. He wished also to discuss his own conception of history. Alison’s work was both an affront to scholarship and an occasion for Mill to reveal something of his recent historical reflection. Carlyle was encouraging: “by all means review him, and in the widest vehicle you can get. It is a thing utterly unknown to the English and ought to be known. Speak of it what you know. If Alison prove stupid dismiss him the sooner, but tell your own story freely without fear or favour.”165

Mill was eager to take on both Whig and Tory. Having read Alison, he wrote again:

the man is quite inconceivably stupid and twaddling. I think beyond anybody who has attempted to write elaborately on the subject. He has no research; the references with which he loads his margin are chiefly to compilations. I could write something about him or rather about his subject; but I could employ myself better unless there were some widely-circulated periodical that would publish it, the Edinburgh Review perhaps would, were it not that I should wish to shew up Macaulay’s ignorance of the subject and assumption of knowledge, as shewn in that very review.166

Simultaneously, however, he offered to the Monthly Repository “a few pages on a stupid book lately published by a man named Alison, and pretending to be a history of the French Revolution.” He then followed this proposal with the tired and dutiful statement, “I am sick of that subject, but I could write something on it which perhaps would be of more use to the M.R. than something better would be. . . .”167

Mill could not see how to strike the larger target behind Alison. When done, he called his review “a poor, flimsy, short paper on that book of Alison’s, which I undertook in an evil hour, when the subject was as remote as possible from those which were occupying my thoughts and feelings at the time; and which I accordingly performed exceedingly ill, and was obliged to cancel the part which had cost me most labour.” What this part was he did not reveal; why he abandoned it is unknown. He told Carlyle the review was “not worth yourEdition: current; Page: [xlix] perusal.”168 Mill seems to have believed that the book was not worth his critique, was too slight to bear the weight of the crushing rejoinder he had in him. Five years earlier, when he had still thought seriously of doing a history, he had dissected Scott’s work, using detailed references to the memoirs and histories. Now he was no longer interested in doing that. Neither Alison nor his work justified presentation of what Mill had once thought he had to say about the Revolution as a result of his exacting scrutiny of the published sources, and in the light of his Radical beliefs.

Alison’s qualifications were quickly discarded: it was not even a question of measuring him against an ideal historian’s talent to create character, summon up the historical setting, establish the play between personality and circumstance. As a Tory, Mill noted, Alison might be expected to disapprove of his actors; instead he offered only indiscriminately charitable judgments. Rather than “that highest impartiality which proceeds from philosophic insight,” there was “abundance of that lower kind which flows from milkiness of disposition.” Free of cant, he was devoid of originality. If he followed Thiers and Mignet, he rendered the drama of events “flat, cold, and spiritless” (116). If he honestly revealed his sources, their poverty betrayed his slight reading.169 His memory was defective, his knowledge of the French language flawed. He knew enough about neither the Revolution nor “the universal subject, the nature of man” (122). His reflective capacity was barren, his generalizations were either truisms or “such as a country-gentleman, accustomed to being king of his company, talks after dinner” (116). Alison’s “insignificant book” was judged to be empty of knowledge, thought, and philosophy (122). But, as Mill pointed out, if that were all he himself had to say, his article might end.

He had two things to say, the first of which had been slipped in earlier, in praising this not very exceptional writer, Mill had noted that Alison at least “does not join in the ill-informed and rash assertion of the Edinburgh Review, reechoed by the Quarterly, that the first authors of the French Revolution were mediocre men” (115). This was as close as he got, on this occasion, to assailing Macaulay directly. The second, more important thing he wished to repeat was that the Revolution could never be understood unless as “one turbulent passage in a progressive revolution embracing the whole human race.” There was an immense “moral revolution” under way, in which the events in France were “a mere incident in a great change in man himself, in his belief, in his principles of conduct, and therefore in the outward arrangements of society; a change which is but half completed, and which is now in a state of more rapid progress here in Edition: current; Page: [l] England, than any where else.” All this, which Mill believed to be part of “the scientific aspect” of history, escaped Alison (118). Mill’s position was that the Revolution had produced “substantial good . . . at the cost of immediate evil of the most tremendous kind.” No one could ever know whether more could have been obtained for less, or whether averting revolution (how this might have been achieved he did not explain) would not have halted all progress and reduced the French to “the condition of Russian boors.” The Tories had reduced revolution to “a bagatelle,” the work of a handful of wilful bloody-minded men; they refused to understand that “rapid progress” and “practical good” might not be achieved by peaceful means. They would not see that it was the French crown and its advisers that had abandoned peaceful means. Crimes were committed, some by “bad men,” but all with a single object: to save the Revolution, whatever the cost (120, 121).

When he read the first volume, Mill may have underestimated Alison’s work as popular history and propaganda. In reply to Carlyle’s note of approval of the review,170 Mill remarked somewhat evenly, “I also am conscious that I write with a greater appearance of sureness and strong belief than I did for a year or two before, in that period of recovery after the petrification of a narrow philosophy. . . .” This rather mixed and invertebrate review, however, does not make a strong impression. It is uncertainly dependent on three disparate intentions: to rekindle, if only momentarily, the fire of Mill’s earlier defence of the Revolution; to strike out at political opponents; to say something about his currently developing philosophy of history. Naturally it did nothing to give Alison pause: if it led him to fatten up his bibliographical prefaces, it by no means discouraged him from pursuing his narrative. He continued to revise his work, which had an immense success as a detailed history of the Revolution in its wider setting. It was translated into many languages and became the best-selling such work for much of the century in England and North America.171 Mill was unrepentant. Nine years after his review, when Alison had completed the final volume, he told Napier, “You have touched up Alison very well & it was time. My fingers have often itched to be at him. The undeserved reputation into which that book is getting, merely because it is Tory history, & the only connected one of that important time, is very provoking.”172

CARLYLE

When Mill first mentioned Alison to him, Carlyle already had a copy “lying on a Table.” Having “glanced” at it, he was both impressed and dismissive. His Edition: current; Page: [li] reaction told something about his own scholarship. “He is an Ultra Tory,” he told Mill, “and therefore cannot understand the French Revolution; otherwise, they say, a man of considerable ability; his Margin bears marks of great inquiry (Thiers and the like I saw quoted almost every page), the man too was in France and published Travels. . . .”173 That Carlyle should have been impressed by Alison’s first citation of his references, where Mill was so scathing, illustrated a gap between their conceptions of research that one might not infer from Mill’s appreciation of Carlyle’s History in 1837. At the time of his review of Alison, Mill had of course revised his early estimate of Carlyle’s writing as “consummate nonsense.”174 On Carlyle’s initiative they had met in September 1831 and begun a correspondence almost at once, and by the next summer Mill was evidently handing over the Revolution: “. . . I am rather fitted to be a logical expounder than an artist. You I look upon as an artist, and perhaps the only genuine one now living in this country: the highest destiny of all, lies in that direction; for it is the artist alone in whose hands Truth becomes impressive, and a living principle of action.”175 With the same forthrightness with which he approved Mill’s high opinion of and attachment to him, Carlyle took full advantage of Mill’s generosity in sending him books for the history he now thought of writing.176 In a way, Mill was a collaborator from the outset.

For more than four years they discussed the work, Mill advising and then responding to the steady importuning, Carlyle communicating something of the gestation throes foretelling the strange and awful work he found welling up in him. “What it is to be I cannot yet tell: my doors of utterance are so wonderful, one knows not how to shape thoughts such as to pass thro’.” His head “buzzing,” he read on and speculated about the literary event “the right History (that impossible thing I mean by History) of the French Revolution” would prove to be. Whoever should write “the truth” about this “grand Poem of our Time” would be “worth all other writers and singers.” Hence the conclusion: “If I were spared alive myself, and had means, why might not I too prepare the way for such a thing?”177 So Mill continued to oblige with books, Carlyle proclaimed his gratitude, the work took shape. “The French business grows darker and darker upon me: dark as chaos. Ach Gott!”178 Above all, it should not be like other Edition: current; Page: [lii] histories, “which are so many ‘dead thistles for Pedant chaffinches to peck at and fill their crops with.’ ”179 By February 1835 the first volume was written and Mill was given it to read. On March 6 Mill brought the terrible news of its accidental burning. Carlyle’s reaction was superb, his consideration of the distracted Mill paternal, his acceptance of the offer of financial compensation spontaneous.180

One must imagine the intensity of Mill’s commitment to the work after what Carlyle called this “miserablest accident (as we name such things) of my whole life.” Seeing it as “purely the hand of Providence,” he admitted that the manuscript had “pleased me better than anything I had ever done,” acknowledged that “That first volume” could not be reproduced, and bravely hoped to produce another that would be “if not better or equal, all that I can.”181 But to Mill he wrote courageously: “The thing must be made better than it was, or we shall never be able, not to forget it, but to laugh victorious in remembering it.” He refused the £200 Mill pressed on him, accepting only £100, the amount he said he had spent, and continued to ask and to receive from Mill “brave cargoes of Books.”182 His recovery was swift, his optimism marked: “I do really believe the Book will be the better for it, and we shall all be the better.”183 If the labour was heavy, the composition was rapid, though by the spring of 1836 the mere thought of the day when “this fatal History” would no longer weigh on him was like “a prophecy of resurrection.”184 Mill again read the manuscript and sent off his annotations and suggestions, removing “anything merely quaint in the mode of expression,” and saying, “The only general remark I have to make on stile is that I think it would often tell better on the reader if what is said in an abrupt, exclamatory & interjectional manner were said in the ordinary grammatical mode of nominative & verb. . . .” Mill’s manner was tentative and deferential, Carlyle’s response appreciative and slightly mocking: “No Surgeon can touch sore places with a softer hand than you do.” His “quarrel with the Nominative-and-verb” caused him “great sorrow,” but it was “not a quarrel of my seeking. I mean, that the common English mode of writing has to do with what I call hearsays of things; and the great business for me, in which alone I feel any comfort, is recording the presence, bodily concrete coloured presence of things;—for which the Nominative-and-verb, as I find it Here and Now, refuses to stand me in due stead.” But he would comply “more and more as I grow wiser.”185

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Mill was anxious to publish a review before the book appeared. He had discovered from responses to Carlyle’s article on Mirabeau in the Westminster Review for January 1837 that some of his friends did not care for the style. Sarah Austin reported that her husband and George Lewis were “clamorous against poor Carlyle’s article & say you will ruin the review if you admit any more. I am afraid this is a very general opinion, though I grieve it should be so.” Mill told her the Mirabeau had been “the most popular article we ever had in the review,” that the only people he met who disliked it were John Arthur Roebuck, George Grote, and William Nassau Senior, “& those three dislike everything, the style of which is not humdrum.” As for Carlyle’s “usual peculiarities,” they had in that case fallen “greatly short of the average degree of them.”186 Thus riding the criticism off, he took the warning and determined to pre-empt opinion on the History. The book and the review appeared in July 1837.187

He took the offensive from high ground: the book was unprecedented and must be judged accordingly. Both history and poetry, with a “peculiar” style “unlike the jog-trot characterless uniformity which distinguishes the English style,” it had, he admitted, some “mere mannerisms,” German “transcendentalisms” that obscured meaning, but as literature was surpassed “only by the great masters of epic poetry.” The narrative was “strictly true”; based on “irrefragable authority,” it presented “human beings,” rather than the “stuffed figures” other historians served up (134, 135). Hume and Gibbon compared unfavourably with Carlyle in this regard. Mill quoted large extracts to illustrate the poetry and power of the narrative. He judged the theory informing the History sound: crown, aristocracy, and clergy had failed in their commissions and so were “hurled . . . into chaos.” As for the Revolution’s “melancholy turn,” “the horrors,” “the iron despotism by which it was forced to wind itself up” and the comparative “smallness of its positive results,” Mill endorsed Carlyle’s opinion that “the French people” were unprepared for the event, did not know what they wished, how they should be governed, in whom they should have faith (159, 160).

His criticisms were gently put: Carlyle was too light on theory. “Without a hypothesis to commence with, we do not even know what end to begin at, what points to enquire into.” Mill “fancied” Carlyle undervalued “general principles” and “set too low a value on what constitutions and forms of government can do” (162). But more he did not challenge in this “perfectly true picture of a great historical event, as it actually happened” (158). Aware of the problem of access, he did not fault Carlyle for failing to push his research into Croker’s large Edition: current; Page: [liv] collection of contemporary pamphlets;188 but neither did he fault him for the relatively slight bibliography he had worked from, for accepting legends, for being apparently fixated on the surface drama and neglecting the context, for failing to discuss the origins (Mill said only that the introductory chapters were “the least interesting part of the book” [139]) and the outcome of the Revolution. Indeed, beyond the fundamental agreement between them on the decrepitude of the old order and the virtue of the early Revolutionaries, it is difficult to see what Mill and Carlyle had in common.

Mill, of course, had been fully warned of what Carlyle had had in mind, and had wholeheartedly abetted the enterprise. If the Girondins were less than favourably treated, there was enough philosophy rumbling beneath the vibrant surface of events to redeem such a lapse. Carlyle had broken the political mould completely, “delivered,” as Acton was to say, “our fathers from thraldom to Burke.”189 He had asked new questions, written a new history. Moreover, he had done what Mill was convinced he himself could not do: he had created a work of art. Still, a reader may come away from Mill’s review, with its curious Carlylean capitalizations, believing that the most rigorous standards he had applied to Scott, and to some extent to Alison, if not Mignet, are absent there. Partly, it is that by 1837 Mill’s conception of history and his interest in the Revolution had changed; partly that Mill was now receptive to the imaginative attempt Carlyle had made to portray and understand the Revolution from within, to see it, as historians in the twentieth century would say, from below.

Afterwards, Mill prided himself on three reviewing achievements in the Edition: current; Page: [lv]London and Westminster: preparing the way for acceptance of Lord Durham’s Report, accelerating the success of Carlyle’s French Revolution, and establishing in England Guizot’s reputation as an historian. In the Autobiography he spoke of pre-empting “the commonplace critics” by hailing Carlyle’s book as “one of those productions of genius which are above all rules, and are a law to themselves.” He did not think his review had been well executed, but looked on it as “an honest attempt to do immediate service” to a deserving man and his work. He had said much the same thing in a more aggressive manner to R.B. Fox: the article had “greatly accelerated” Carlyle’s success, for whether “so strange & incomprehensible” a book would “succeed or fail seemed to depend upon the turn of a die—but I got the first word, blew the trumpet before it at its first coming out & by claiming for it the honours of the highest genius frightened the small fry of critics from pronouncing a hasty condemnation, got fair play for it & then its success was sure.”190 At the time, he had told Carlyle that the review was having “a good effect,” though the oral and written opinions on the article itself were “mostly unfavourable.”191 This was not mysterious: whatever the personal commitments that made him champion Carlyle’s Revolution, he had not applied to it the standards of criticism by which he judged other works. Three years later, alluding to the period of “my Carlylism, a vice of style which I have since carefully striven to correct,” he told a correspondent whom he was admonishing for the same affectation, “I think Carlyle’s costume should be left to Carlyle whom alone it becomes & in whom it would soon become unpleasant if it were made common. . . .”192

MILL AND THE REVOLUTION OF 1830

carlyle’sFrench Revolution and Mill’s review of it were written in the wake of another Revolution that, from Mill’s point of view, had burst gloriously on the scene and subsided ingloriously within a matter of weeks or months. The political void Carlyle envisioned at the centre of the 1789 experience Mill detected in the July Days, as the aftermath revealed the incapacity or self-interest of those who superseded the Bourbon monarchy. He had been excited by the lively press wars of the late 1820s. If the duc de Berry’s murder in February 1820 brought a temporary crack-down on the press, the running battle of the opposition parties with the governments of Louis XVIII and Charles X saw at least as many victories as defeats for the liberal press, its proprietors, and its journalists. Neither direct censorship nor regulatory measures weakened its independence. French journals were numerous, variegated, and vigorous. Under Edition: current; Page: [lvi] the moderate ministry of the vicomte de Martignac in 1828-29, the press régime was relaxed, and although he was replaced by the ultra-royalist prince de Polignac in August 1829 it was the latitude of the laws Martignac had permitted that goaded the government into its final assault on the press in July 1830, and so precipitated the Revolution.193

How much Mill knew of the close manoeuvring in this long contest that had gone on from the time of his first visit to France can only be surmised. But with the installation of Polignac, both King and minister were daily vilified in the opposition sheets. Mill, who followed the press, was approving. “In France,” he wrote d’Eichthal, “the best thinkers & writers of the nation, write in the journals & direct public opinion: but our daily & weekly writers are the lowest hacks of literature. . . .”194 On the eve of the outbreak, he condemned The Times for siding with Polignac, reeled off the despotic acts of Charles X’s reign (the notorious Law of Sacrilege, 1826, “worthy of the days of Calas and La Barre,” had “persuaded the civilized world that the reign of despotism was assured for another century, and that France was relapsing into the servitude and superstition of the middle ages”), and proposed that in the “most unlikely” event the government did suppress demonstrations, a calamity would ensue for France and Europe.195 He did not apprehend imminent revolt. One week later the five July Ordinances were published, the journalists reacted fiercely, and the confused and complex politics and violence began which sent the King on his journey into exile and some days later installed Louis Philippe d’Orléans on the throne as King of the French.196

Early in August, Mill, with his friends George Graham and John Arthur Roebuck, went off to Paris.197 He stayed a month. For him it was both a fulfilment and the beginning of a long disenchantment. Years later, Charles Eliot Norton noticed “the sentimental part of [Mill’s] intelligence, which is of Edition: current; Page: [lvii] immense force, and has only been kept in due subjection by his respect for his own reason.”198 It was on view in 1830. Mill expected too much. He carried with him an idealized vision of revolution founded on his reading of 1789, too limited a knowledge of the persons and forces in play in France, and a strong sense of his personal goals at the time. He was unprepared for the sharp political game that replaced one monarch with another and brought about a large-scale administrative shuffle, but produced no serious social change. By the laws of March and April 1831, power remained securely with the landowning and professional class, a small pays légal attached to the state through the offices it offered them.199 If the ultra-royalists went home to their estates, the popular element brought into the streets to make the revolution also subsided. The new régime was defensive from the start.

At the time, Mill barely sensed what was happening. Though “the cowardice and imbecility of the existing generation of public men, with scarcely a single exception,” promised little, he took hope from “the spirit and intelligence of the young men and of the people, the immense influence of the journals, and the strength of the public voice.” Believing, mistakenly, that “there has been an excellent revolution without leaders,” he hoped naively that “leaders will not be required in order to establish a good government.”200 Roebuck’s story was that he, Mill, and their friends had almost forced the audience at the Opéra (including Louis Philippe) by their shouts of “Debout! debout!” to stand for the Marseillaise.201 If so, they were only playing games while the tough-minded men who had engineered the new monarchy were establishing themselves in power. Mill’s remarks on the goodness of “the common people” were romantic and sentimental: “The inconceivable purity and singleness of purpose, almost amounting to naiveté, which they all shew in speaking of these events, has given me a greater love for them than I thought myself capable of feeling for so large a collection of human beings, and the more exhilarating views which it opens of human nature will have a beneficial effect on the whole of my future life.”202 From the beginning, he pictured a Manichean situation: the good people versus Edition: current; Page: [lviii] the wicked monied classes, the virtuous poor versus the scoundrel placehunters. Such a reading could have no happy confirmation.

Until 1834 he contributed observations on the French scene to the Examiner, arguing his expertise from “a tolerably familiar acquaintance with the history of France for the last forty years” and his experience in Paris in August-September 1830. Of the revolution outside the capital, of ongoing disturbances among the peasantry, of the struggle for traditional rights in the collision between rural capitalism and the community, Mill made almost no mention. His angle of vision remained political. Early on, he began to see that France had exchanged “a feeble despotism for a strong and durable oligarchy,” that the parallel drawn with 1688 was too close. At least the Bourbons (that “stupid race”) had been denied the cunning to ally themselves with “the monied class.” England showed how the monied aristocracy worked: 150 years after the Glorious Revolution, Englishmen were still fruitlessly demanding parliamentary reform.203 He expressed hope nevertheless that “the young men who now head the popular party” and “the patriots of more established character and more mature years” would create a liberal régime against the “jobbing oligarchy”; he continued to believe that “the educated classes in France, on all questions of social improvement to which their attention has been directed, are in advance of the majority of the same classes in England”; he attacked the British press, particularly The Times, for its “crazy outcries” and the “fund of stupidity and vulgar prejudice in our principal journalists” on the subject of France; he greeted the modest extension of the suffrage as “poor enough” and criticized “M. Guizot and his friends” for their “bigotted and coxcombical devotion to their own ways and their own disciples.” He watched, in short, as his romantic enthusiasm for a popular revolution ostensibly led by an intellectual élite of historian journalists (in so far as it had any leaders) was dissipated by the realities of the situations acquises and everyday politics.204 By February 1831, he openly hoped for the fall of Louis Philippe. The Revolution, he said that spring, had “brought forth none but bitter fruits”: unemployment, fear of war, political dissension, and oppression.205

Mill’s intermittent chronicle did not much depart from its constant themes of jobbery, persecution of the press, and the hollowness of the parliamentary process. When the Lyon silkweavers rose in revolt on 21-22 November, 1831, however, he was sympathetic. “It is melancholy,” he noted, “to see, that an Edition: current; Page: [lix] event so pregnant with meaning as the late insurrection of Lyon, should have made no deeper impression upon the men by whom France is now governed, than is indicated by all they do, and by all they fail to do, day after day, and month after month.”206 He accurately assessed the importance of an event that would one day be seen to mark the origin of the modern labour movement. But it was the struggle for free speech that most concerned him, and he was optimistic on grounds that thus far the press had been “more than a match for every government which has defied it to a contest.”207 Parliament gave him less hope, pained as he was to see former liberals, like Casimir Périer who had helped to overthrow the Villèle ministry in 1828, becoming agents of repression.208 A bloody clash on 5-6 June, 1832, occurred between the army and opponents of the régime on the occasion of the funeral of the opposition deputy. General Lamarque, a Bonapartist and friend of La Fayette, the capital was placed in a state of siege. “The government of the barricades,” Mill commented, “has done what Charles X was not permitted to do. It has assumed the power of dispensing with the laws and the courts of justice.” What he called “the forty years war” that momentarily had seemed to end in 1830 had now “broken out afresh.”209 Optimism gave way to Cassandra-like intimations of disaster. Of Marshal Soult’s ministry of all talents (October 1832-July 1834), Mill remarked that with such men as Thiers, Guizot, and the duc de Broglie, no other government had had such brilliance, “yet none ever was more certain of mis-governing France, and coming to a speedy and disgraceful end.” Though Louis Philippe was undeniably the target for repeated attempts on his life, Mill judged the one of 19 November, 1832, likely to be “one of the low tricks with which the French police has long familiarised us.”210

French events were “paltry,” the Revolution of 1830 had turned sour; Mill grew tired: “. . . I am so thoroughly sick of the wretched aspect of affairs [in France],” he commented in March 1833, “that I have written little about them in the Examiner for a long time.” Only the Saint-Simonians had made good the promise of 1830, and they had “run wild.” Apart from them, he told Carlyle, “the excessive avidity & barrenness of the French mind has never been so Edition: current; Page: [lx] strikingly displayed: there are such numbers of talkers & writers so full of noise and fury, keeping it up for years and years, and not one new thought, new to them I mean, has been struck out by all the collisions since I first began attending to these matters.”211 Guizot’s legislation on primary education caught his interest.212 He thought the question of the unrepresentative character of the Chamber of Deputies was beginning to interest the nation.213 But the savage crushing of renewed strike activity and the ensuing insurrection in Lyon, followed by the notorious massacre of April 1834 in Paris, led him to conclude that the ministerial record was poor save in the field of repression.214

THE MONSTER TRIAL

Mill’s autumnal note was struck in the aftermath of strong blows to the opposition. The most formidable force Louis Philippe had to face was the amorphous republican movement, a bewildering variety of men and ideas, each with historical antecedents, loosely grouped around the notion of popular sovereignty and universal suffrage, but divided on means. Legislation against unauthorized associations struck at their organizations, but they grouped and regrouped to escape its severities. The sympathetic press and its journalists endured incessant prosecutions for their attacks on the ministry and vilification of the crown.215 In the spring of 1834 matters came to a head with the government’s decision to strike at the newly formed republican Société des Droits de l’Homme which aimed at political and social revolution. When juries failed to uphold the state in eighty percent of the cases brought against a single newspaper, the Tribune of Armand Marrast, the chambers voted for a law that would bring such prosecutions before correctional tribunals.216

The Lyon silk workers had struck in February; on 9-12 April there took place the terrible street battle between them and the army for control of the city, in which some three hundred soldiers and workers were killed. This gave the signal to the republicans of the Société des Droits de l’Homme to raise barricades in the Marais district of Paris on 13 April. Though the arrest of 150 leaders led to attempts to abort the rising, a clash took place and the insurgents were crushed by the army in a barbarous exercise of brutality and mutilation, the most celebrated Edition: current; Page: [lxi] episode of which was the horrifying slaughter of the inhabitants of a house at 12 rue Transnonain.217 The deputies quickly agreed to increase the size of the army, some 2000 suspects were rounded up, and an ordinance provided for bringing insurgents from both cities to trial before the Chamber of Peers. This was the procès monstre, staged at the Luxembourg Palace, May 1835-January 1836, with hundreds of witnesses called, thousands of pages of documents in submission, and 164 leaders on trial. It was designed to destroy the republican and insurrectional movements, and its size underlined the apparent magnitude of the opposition from the left. Its proceedings were marked by tumult, citation of some of the defence lawyers for contempt of court, and the escape of twenty-eight of the principal accused.218

Mill’s article appeared while the trial was still in progress. It was a frank defence of the Société des Droits de l’Homme, particularly against the charge that it was hostile to private property. He seized the occasion to deliver still another lesson to Whigs and Tories on the meaning of the great events from 1789 to the fall of Robespierre, and to clear the Revolution (save for the Babeuf episode) of this same charge. The trial itself he saw as an attempt to create panic and strike at the opposition, to confuse matters by trying both “the pretended authors of the pretended republican conspiracy of Paris” and “the presumed authors of the real trades’ union revolt at Lyon” before the tame placemen in the Chamber of Peers. Full of contempt for this upper chamber, for “the imbecility” of its composition, he predicted that the trial would be “its last throw for political importance” (129).

In fact the prison break-out and flight to England of such important leaders among the accused as Godefroy Cavaignac and Armand Marrast demoralized those remaining in Sainte-Pélagie prison. Moreover, the failed assassination attempt on the King on 22 July by Giuseppe Fieschi, a self-proclaimed republican with two accomplices from the Société des Droits de l’Homme, damaged their cause still more. Public sympathy fell away. By the time the Cour des Pairs pronounced its last sentence of deportation or imprisonment in January 1836, the internal prospects of the régime were much improved. The Société was destroyed, the opposition had divided into a small underground revolutionary movement and a weakened republican group seeking now to elect deputies to the Chamber of Deputies and to survive the new press laws. Mill was appalled by the legislation, which seemed likely to touch even English newspapers critical of the Edition: current; Page: [lxii] régime. Six years before he had remarked that the Houses of Parliament could not show a single member “who approaches within twenty degrees of M. de Broglie.”219 The duc de Broglie now presided over the government that had brought these things about. “I should much like to know,” Mill wrote to Carlyle, “what old Sieyes thinks of the present state of France. . . . What a curious page all this is in the history of the French revolution. France seems to be désenchanté for a long time to come—& as the natural consequence of political disenchantment—profoundly demoralized. All the educated youth are becoming mere venal commodities.”220

Some months later, in January 1837, Mill remarked to Tocqueville that French politics appeared to be “in the same torpid state.” Tocqueville said he did not know anyone who could grasp French affairs: “Nous sommes dans cet état douteux de demi-sommeil et de demi-réveil qui échappe à l’analyse.” But he thought the nation had survived the threat of revolutionary violence and anarchy, and was returning to its liberal and democratic instincts: “mais que Dieu nous garde des émeutes! elles semblent menacer le gouvernement et par le fait elles ne nuisent qu’à la liberté.”221 Mill would have accepted the conclusion, but not the presumption on which it was based.222 He abhorred violence, too, but his sympathies were with those who had challenged the small pays légal and their “shop-keeper king,” and who seemed to have failed.

CARREL

Soon after the great trial, Mill’s despondency deepened with the sudden death of the journalist he admired more than any other. Armand Carrel, with Thiers and Mignet, had founded the National in January 1830, intending to destroy not only the Polignac ministry but the Bourbon monarchy as well. Being historians, they developed the parallel between their France and England on the eve of 1688. Sovereignty was located in the people, and they called in the final crisis for the “république, déguisée sous la monarchie, au moyen du gouvernement représentatif.”223 In some sense the July Monarchy was their creation. Thiers had Edition: current; Page: [lxiii] promptly moved into politics; Mignet retired to scholarship and the archives, leaving Carrel, the most effervescent and brilliant of them, at the National.

Carrel had given proof of unorthodoxy in 1821 when, though an army officer, he had rashly associated with Carbonari conspirators. He had resigned his commission in 1823 to join a foreign legion helping the Spanish rebels against Ferdinand VII, and thus soon found himself in a war on the opposite side from the French army that had been sent down to put the King back on his throne. For this he was three times court-martialled, escaping with his life only on a legal technicality.224 A student of history, he thereafter helped Augustin Thierry assemble the materials for his history of the Norman Conquest and began the work which led to his own Histoire de la contre-révolution en Angleterre. He was, however, a political journalist, and he was independent. He refused a préfecture under the July régime; he joked about what he might have done had he been offered an army division. And he served notice that he was still a democrat.225 By early 1832, Carrel was moving toward the republican position, though he did not overtly ally himself with the Société des Droits de l’Homme. He attacked the authorities and was repeatedly prosecuted. Juries would not convict him. The government was determined to drive the opposition press out of existence by police harassment, arrests, trials, imprisonments, and fines.226 Concentrating on Marrast’s Tribune, they brought it to collapse in May 1835, but Carrel, more nuancé, they did not bring down.

Mill was aware of Carrel’s intensely nationalist stance in the diplomatic crisis of 1830-31, of his certain Bonapartist sympathy, and of his contempt for Louis Philippe’s refusal to launch French forces on the road to the liberation of the Poles and the Belgians. (Scornful of a policy of “la paix à tout prix,” Carrel said, “Il y avait plus de fierté sous le jupon de la Pompadour.”)227 It seemed not to disturb him. He was quick to notice Carrel’s toast to the Reform Bill at a patriotic banquet, offering France’s sympathy and congratulations, despite lingering anti-English feeling in the National.228 When the newspaper attacked English Edition: current; Page: [lxiv] journals for their treatment of France, Mill agreed, saying Carrel should know that “the popular party” thought as ill of Marshal Soult’s government as Carrel did himself.229 Despite Carrel’s somewhat turbulent disposition, or perhaps because of it, he had appeal for Mill, who believed he was a wise man, just the same. Carrel could be cautious; he showed this after the disastrous rioting attending Lamarque’s funeral.230 And in the autumn of 1833, on a visit to France, Mill was introduced to Carrel. He communicated the immensely favourable impression he got to Carlyle, and was to incorporate his immediate reactions in his article four years later (201). Carrel’s mind struck him as much more refined than that of Godefroy Cavaignac, President of the Société des Droits de l’Homme. He was heartened by the meeting and by the prospect of correspondence: “with Carrel I am to establish an exchange of articles; Carrel is to send some to the Examiner and I am to send some to the National, with liberty to publish them here.”231

Mill followed the running battle with the régime, in which Carrel, sustaining prosecutions and fines, sought to evade the Cour Royale de Paris and the Cour de Cassation, tirelessly printed court proceedings, hounded the King mercilessly, and predicted “un gouvernement sans rois et sans nobles.”232 He was delighted when Carrel was acquitted by a jury in the Cour d’Assises de la Seine-Inférieure, having argued that if Louis Philippe wished to be his own minister he must expect to be treated like other ministers.233 But the net tightened. After Fieschi’s attempt, the press law of September 1835 limited room for manoeuvre.234 With the Tribune already closed down, and François Raspail’s Réformateur fallen victim to the new law, the National was the last important defender of republicanism. Carrel had accepted republicanism, but he was a moderate, no Edition: current; Page: [lxv] revolutionist; he had no use for utopian activists. “Des fous! des brouillons! des envieux! des impuissants!” he had said in 1831. “Que de temps il faudra avant que le pays soit mûr pour la République!”235 Though he had moved to republicanism, he still favoured manoeuvre. Entering Sainte-Pélagie prison, he had written Chateaubriand, wondering how long it would be before men would sensibly work out their “inévitables transactions” by negotiation rather than death and exhaustion. The prison experience was sinister and embittering, he was personally threatened, and he had no affinity for the rough sort of man. All the same, he recognized the demands of the working class: one must “posséder assez d’intelligence pour le comprendre, assez de coeur pour ne pas s’en effrayer.”236 Sainte-Beuve reckoned him too sensitive, too obstinate, too little able to strike the popular note, though a great and principled journalist. What attracted Mill to Carrel is easy to see.

Carrel was cut off early by misadventure in a duel. The journalist Emile de Girardin brought out a cheap daily, La Presse, which he hoped to sustain by advertising on English lines. Carrel, welcoming the possibility of lower cost to the public through increased circulation, doubted Girardin’s democratic motives Saying so, he brought upon himself the riposte that republican editors afforded their comfortable situation at the expense of their readers. When Girardin threatened to back this up with proofs. Carrel believed he was being threatened with revelations about his private life. The quarrel could not be resolved and Carrel issued his challenge, which led to a fatal encounter in the Bois de Vincennes on 22 July, 1836.237

Mill took the news hard and sent word to Carlyle, who replied that Godefroy Cavaignac had told him of “la mort funeste de Carrel.” He supposed that “such as he was, there is not his like left in France. And to die as a fool dieth!—It seems to me, as I tell you always, that France has pitiful destinies lying before it. . . .”238 Mill expressed his sense of loss to Tocqueville when he told him that though he had many friends in France, he and Carrel were the two for whom he felt “une véritable admiration.”239 It was a curious confession; it is unlikely that Tocqueville could have appreciated Carrel in the same way. Mill had not known Carrel well, but he had made him a symbol of democratic uprightness and Edition: current; Page: [lxvi] tenacity in the face of oligarchical evil—“the unapproachable Armand Carrel,” as he would say, a man with neither legislative nor any other public office, merely the editorship of a newspaper, who had made himself “the most powerful political leader of his age and country.”240 In this there was some extravagance; it showed that, at thirty, Mill was still capable of responding to the romantic excitement that had taken him to Paris in August 1830 and which had been rekindled in Carrel’s presence three years later.

The long commemorative article appeared fifteen months after Carrel’s death, drawing on studies by Désiré Nisard and Emile Littré. Mill’s interpretation continued to be heightened: “The man whom not only his friends but his enemies, and all France, would have proclaimed President or Prime Minister with one voice. . . . Ripened by years and favoured by opportunity, he might have been the Mirabeau or the Washington of his age, or both in one.” (169, 170.) For this there really was no evidence, and others saw him more clearly.241 Carrel seemed to Mill unusually practical for a Frenchman. His history of the English counter-revolution was judged superior to the works of Guizot and François Mazure. Again, in this article, Mill castigated the betrayers of 1830, the oligarchy who had fallen on public office “like tigers upon their prey” (192), against whom Carrel showed so well. Possessing the gifts of Mirabeau, “he could make men of all sorts, even foreigners, feel that they could have been loyal Edition: current; Page: [lxvii] to him—that they could have served and followed him in life and death” (203). Mill pictured him as a moderate, pacific, single-minded republican who toward the end of his life sensibly came round to “demanding an extension of the suffrage; that vital point, the all-importance of which France has been so slow to recognise, and which it is so much to be regretted that he had not chosen from the first, instead of republicanism, to be the immediate aim of his political life” (209). Thus he was “a martyr to the morality and dignity of public discussion,” and a victim of “that low state of our civilisation” that makes a man defend his reputation “sword in hand, as in the barbarous ages” (212-13). His memory, Mill said, would live on with that of the events of 1830, but “the star of hope for France in any new convulsions, was extinguished when Carrel died” (211).

As review and commentary, the article was unusually emotional and lyrical. Mill told Molesworth: “I have written con amore & those who have seen it think it the best thing I have yet done. I never admired any man as I did Carrel; he was to my mind the type of a philosophic radical man of action in this epoch.”242 The intense personal reaction he had to Carrel enabled him to set aside or rationalize much in his nature and his life that he might well have disapproved in another man. He made of Carrel everything that a young liberal should be, even to coming round at the end to reflect a touch of the English radical. He had almost produced an example of that croisement des races he believed would be to the benefit of both peoples.

TWO “GREAT HISTORICAL MINDS”

MICHELET

Carrel had been secretary to Augustin Thierry in the mid-1820s, and it was Thierry who had called for a “historiography of French liberty,” documenting the thesis that liberty was old and that the middle class had been the bearer of the nation’s interest.243 What Carrel might have done as historian of this theme, had he returned to his studies as he sometimes suggested he might, remains an open question. Another historian, for whom Thierry also paved the way, showed how uncertainly focused this romantic impulse was. Like Thierry, Jules Michelet wrote history to shape the present and future. As Thierry put it in 1817, “We are constantly being told to model ourselves on our forefathers. Why don’t we follow this advice! Our forefathers were the artisans who established the Edition: current; Page: [lxviii] communes of the Middle Ages and who first conceived freedom as we understand it today.”244 For Thierry and Carrel, writing history was a political act. But it is not sure that this was so for Michelet. If he shared Thierry’s passion for erudition and critical imagination, Michelet developed a history that was far more personal than the history of his contemporaries. He was to become the greatest of the philosophical and romantic historians. His origins and his trajectory were almost entirely different from theirs.

He had read enormously in literature and philosophy, the classics and contemporary authors, French, English, and German. He read Herder, he ever after claimed Vico as his master. Like the Saint-Simonians, he was in search of a system that would explain the meaning of human experience, and his chosen field finally was history. Between 1825 and 1831, he published three short summaries of European history for secondary instruction, an abridged translation of Vico’s Scienza nuova with his own commentary, an introduction to “universal history,” and a history of the Roman Republic. He was a professor at the Collège Sainte-Barbe from 1822 to 1827, a maître de conférences at the Ecole Normale from 1827 to 1837. Indeed, he had taught his budding normaliens at 6:30 in the mornings in order to be at the Tuileries by 8 o’clock to instruct the princesse Louise, daughter of the duchesse de Berry, in history. After the July Days he was similarly chosen to tutor Louis Philippe’s fifth child, the princesse Clémentine. A rising star after 1831, he lectured for Guizot (Minister of Public Education) at the Sorbonne from 1834 to 1836, and took up the chaire d’histoire et de morale at the Collège de France on 23 April, 1837. The most important post he held was as chef de la section historique in the Archives du Royaume (later Archives Nationales) from the autumn of 1830 until 1852. Though he had also written earlier on the history of France, from then on his broad concerns in history were narrowed down to the history of his own country. The result was the first six volumes of his Histoire de France, from the beginnings to the end of the Middle Ages, published between 1833 and 1844. He believed that a great age of historiography was opening up; he was at the very centre of the collective historical enterprise sponsored by Guizot and supported by the state. Increasingly he came to regard France as the heart of the European experience and himself as the chosen historian of her past.245

Unlike his contemporaries, Michelet could not have claimed 1830 as his Revolution. While they were helping to topple the Bourbon monarchy, he was giving his courses. But reflection on the July Days led him to accept the legend of a spontaneous uprising with only one collective, nameless hero: the people. Edition: current; Page: [lxix] The theme of his Introduction à l’histoire universelle, published the following year, was the history of the world as the struggle and triumph of liberty. If the Trois Glorieuses later assumed in his mind an importance and an impact they had not had at the time, still reflection on them helped him to see the underlying theme of the national history he determined to write, the materials for which surrounded him at the Archives. In all this, he was initially the admirer and the protégé of Guizot. But he grew increasingly outspoken and radical, attacking the Church and the Jesuit Order, celebrating le peuple and eventually the French Revolution in a way that was uncongenial to the régime. Thus it was not surprising that, in the growing tension of the winter of 1847-48, Michelet should have been seen as a prophet of some great popular disturbance. In January 1848, his lectures at the Collège de France were suspended.

Mill was well aware of him. Had the London and Westminster Review continued, he said, he would have written “more than one article on Michelet, a writer of great & original views, very little known among us.”246 Through d’Eichthal he received a letter from Michelet in April 1840, accompanied by two volumes of the Histoire de France, and he thanked him by the same route for his “admirable” work, with which he was “intimately acquainted” and for which he had “long felt the warmest admiration.” He hoped to review both these volumes and the earlier Histoire de la république romaine.247 He then received the message that as Volume V of the Histoire de France was “si peu favorable aux Anglais,” Michelet was hoping that “la haute impartialité” of Mill would assure the volume a good reception in England. To this end he wished Mill to know that (a) where Joan of Arc and other matters were concerned, he had rigorously rejected the chronicles and based himself on the documents, and (b) though reputed to be “un homme d’imagination,” he was in fact “dominé par la passion de la vérité.”248 How well Mill was acquainted with Michelet’s personal opinions of England, save as they appeared in his work, and whether he knew Michelet had visited England in the summer of 1834 and found it as little attractive as he might have expected from his studies,249 one may wonder. But he noted ironically of a letter from Michelet that it “proves to me by the Edition: current; Page: [lxx] extravagance of its compliments upon the letter I wrote to him, that if one gives a man exactly the sort of praise he wants to receive, one is sure of getting into his good graces.”250 All the same, Michelet judged well in approaching Mill for an impartial review of a work that showed little appreciation of England other than as the anti-France that galvanized the disunited French into closing ranks and becoming one people.251

Mill was about to do four things: to make a familiar declaration about “the French school” of history; to proclaim a new star in the field of history; to emphasize again the shared French and English past of the Middle Ages; and to make a personal statement about his view of the past. He promised that his review would cause some of Napier’s readers to “stare,”252 but there was little to surprise them. His opening salvo against the stagnation of historical studies in England (Carlyle’s “signal example” apart) was familiar (219). Distinguishing the French as superior even to the Germans, Mill named Thierry, Guizot, and Michelet as “the three great historical minds of France, in our time” (221). All of them avoided “the first stage” of historical inquiry, i.e., judging the past by the standards of the present (222). All of them met the criteria of poetry and imagination characterizing “the second stage,” i.e., producing a true “historical romance.” Indeed, only the French “school of writers” (Carlyle and Niebuhr apart) passed this test (224, 225). And only Guizot had made “frequent and long incursions” into the “third, and the highest stage of historical investigation,” i.e., the construction of “a science of history” to determine the fundamental law of cause and effect (228, 225). What little had been done toward “this greatest achievement” was mostly his contribution (225). Michelet’s distinction, then, was something else: he was “the poet” of the “internal life” of the French people. He knew how to reveal “the spirit of an age,” distilling it from the documents “by the chemistry of the writer’s own mind” (233). He had done this for Rome, where Niebuhr had been silent. He did it for the Middle Ages, not without committing errors, but safeguarded by his “deep erudition, and extensive research” (233).253 Entranced by his emphasis on geography and his sketches of the French provinces, Mill criticized Michelet only for taking Thierry’s rediscovery Edition: current; Page: [lxxi] of the “race of Gaels” and carrying the influence of race in history too far (235, 236).

Mill admitted that he was more concerned to publicize Michelet than to criticize him (254). Anthony Panizzi had given him a critical review the previous year. Mill had written Michelet to ask whether there was anything he would care to have communicated to the British public,254 but there appears to have been no reply. The object was to have him read in England, to warn readers of the difficulties he presented and the unfamiliar conceits, “the personification of abstractions, to an almost startling extent” (255). Mill saw his great strengths and at least suspected his weakness.

After this review in 1844, Mill wrote nothing further of Michelet. On the later volumes of the Histoire de France he made no comment, and of the Histoire de la révolution française, written 1846-53, he said nothing. With its extreme nationalist fervour, almost religious celebration of “the people,” and personification of revolution, it could hardly have appealed to him. By then, Michelet had left “the second stage” for some subjective realm of history outside Mill’s scheme of things.255 Mill was by no means unique in not foreseeing the direction Michelet’s history was to take. Sponsored by Guizot, approved by Carrel, Michelet had seemed early on to be in sympathy with their views. His purposes, however, became increasingly nationalist, his vision narrowed, his mystic sense of himself embodying the past dithyrambic. What preoccupied him had little to do with the progress of civilization that concerned Mill.

Toward the end of his life, Mill noted that the French made too free with the phrase “the principles of the Revolution.” It was the result of “an infirmity of the French mind which has been one main cause of the miscarriage of the French nation in its pursuit of liberty & progess, that of being led by phrases & treating abstractions as if they were realities which have a will & exert active power.”256 Almost certainly he thought Michelet a casualty of this defect. The originality and talent that he had recognized thirty years before in this review were clear. But there was in Michelet and his work a cast of mind profoundly antipathetical to Mill.257

Edition: current; Page: [lxxii]

GUIZOT

Michelet owed much to Guizot: his position as royal tutor, his post at the Archives, his early opportunities at the Sorbonne, if not at the Collège de France. It was Guizot who suspended Michelet’s lectures in 1847. Not remarkably, the protégé’s estimate of his benefactor varied from one period to another: he both admired Guizot’s work and dismissed it as grey. They could hardly have been more different. Though they had in common their commitment to written history as having a social purpose, their purposes were diametrically opposed.258 Despite his clear reservations about the later work, Mill placed Michelet in the triumvirate with Augustin Thierry and Guizot, but he was clear that Guizot was the great historian of the age, “the one best adapted to this country.” What raised him to the summit was the grasp he showed for “the main outline of history” (227, 228). Mill thought the framework he had established, showing the interplay of ideas and institutions, weighing the influence of Roman, Germanic, and Christian factors in European civilization, would endure. If history still had no Newton, Guizot was its “Kepler, and something more” (228). He accounted it one of his successes to “have dinned into people’s ears that Guizot is a great thinker & writer,” and so have been responsible for having him read in England.259 Mill had not quite taken his measure at first. He seems to have discovered the historian, as distinct from the politician, about 1832. The first discussion of him was so infused with political comment that the exceptional historian Mill was shortly to proclaim was not easily recognized. Granting him “no ordinary knowledge of history” and “no ordinary powers of philosophizing” to analyse and explain, Mill criticized his understanding of the English constitution as “deficient.” He had not even troubled to cross the Channel to inform himself. He was bracketed with the doctrinaire “speculators” who made 1688 their “beau idéal,” purporting “to found their political wisdom principally on history, instead of looking to history merely for suggestions, to be brought to the test of a larger and surer experience.”260

Guizot’s political reputation with Mill rose and fell several times. Perceived on the eve of 1830 as a champion of liberty, he fell from grace in the first weeks of the new régime. In Mill’s view, the brave workmen of Paris had driven Charles X out, only to see him replaced by the jobbers, including Guizot, Edition: current; Page: [lxxiii] “a favourer of the new Aristocracy.”261 Among the new men providing for themselves and their friends was the Minister of the Interior; none “had so numerous a coterie as Monsieur and Madame Guizot.”262 Out of office for two years after 2 November, Guizot and his friends were denounced as trimmers, seeking a middle way between reaction and progress.263 As Minister of Public Education in Soult’s cabinet, Guizot struck Mill as dogmatic, offensive, professorial, and “probably at the moment the most unpopular man in France.”264 Mill did not comment on his education law, but he was aware of the important historical and archival work he had set afoot. His politics then appeared to be less of an issue. Through the later 1830s Mill transferred much of his former disapproval of Guizot to his fellow historian and political rival, Thiers.265

When Guizot left Paris to become Ambassador in London in February 1840 (and bide his time until Louis Philippe should summon him back to replace Thiers as Prime Minister), Mill was delighted. If Guizot knew of his caustic commentaries, he chose to overlook them. Visiting him, Mill found his conversation rewarding, up to his expectations, and his being in London “a real événement, for it makes our stupid incurious people read his books.” He thought one could see the difference between France and England by comparing their respective. “Conservative party” leaders, Guizot and Peel.266 Mill’s direct contact was short-lived. The diplomatic crisis with Great Britain that was to destroy Thiers’s government ended Guizot’s embassy in October 1840; he soon became the dominant figure in Soult’s second cabinet until in 1847 he formed his own government that lasted until the Revolution of February 1848. Mill became deeply impressed, judging Guizot to be “the greatest public man living,” and he recanted his past opinions. “I cannot think without humiliation,” he wrote in 1840,

of some things I have written years ago of such a man as this, when I thought him a dishonest politician. I confounded the prudence of a wise man who lets some of his Edition: current; Page: [lxxiv] maxims go to sleep while the time is unpropitious for asserting them, with the laxity of principle which resigns them for personal advancement. Thank God I did not wait to know him personally in order to do him justice, for in 1838 & 1839 I saw that he had reasserted all his old principles at the first time at which he could do so with success & without compromising what in his view were more important principles still, I ought to have known better than to have imputed dishonourable inconsistency to a man whom I now see to have been consistent beyond any statesman of our time & altogether a model of the consistency of a statesman as distinguished from that of a fanatic.267

This extraordinary disavowal of his previous observations was not to be the last word. Even under the spell of immediate contact, Mill said, that though he honoured and venerated him above all contemporary statesmen, “I differ from many of his opinions.”268 Some time later when Comte registered his complaints of mistreatment at the minister’s hands, Mill expressed his “impression pénible” that a great scholar should show “l’esprit de secte” toward a blameless philosopher.269 A renewed reserve showed, whether because of the Comte affair or the unyielding domestic policies of the Soult-Guizot government. Explaining his inability to provide an introduction to Guizot for John Austin, he said his acquaintance with the minister was “so very slight,” and received Sarah Austin’s report of his “elevated moral character” coolly. Four years after the enthusiastic recognition of Guizot’s true distinction, Mill remarked evenly, “A man in such a position as his, acts under so many difficulties, and is mixed up in so many questionable transactions that one’s favourable opinion is continually liable to receive shocks, and I have for many years been oscillating in Guizot’s case between great esteem and considerable misgivings.” Still, he was ready to take the largest view, admitting, “If he was an angel he would be sure to be misunderstood in the place he is in. I do not know whether to wish or to deprecate [the possibility of] his being thrown out of it. . . .”270

That same year, 1845, Mill published his lengthy review of Guizot’s essays and lectures. Ten years before he had commissioned the Rev. Joseph Blanco White to review the lectures. He had found White’s paper “still wanting to give a complete notion of the nature & value of Guizot’s historical speculations,” and had himself added several pages at the beginning and the end.271 In these pages Mill had condemned “the profoundly immoral, as well as despotic régime which France is now enduring.” Calling the July Monarchy “an imitation” of the Edition: current; Page: [lxxv] Empire, he had accused it of seducing France’s distinguished men by office. He had had harsh words for Guizot:

In the capacity of a tool of this system, though we believe him to be greatly more sincere than most of the other tools, we have nothing to say for M. Guizot. But in the more honourable character which he had earned for himself as a professor and as a literary man, before practical politics assailed him with their temptations and their corrupting influences, he deserves to be regarded with very different feelings.

(370.)

The puzzle was that, though deeply attached to his principles, he supported institutions that repressed them; he knew the dangers of power, but did nothing to save himself from them. “Alas! we must say of M. Guizot, what he so feelingly and truly has declared of Italy—‘Il lui manque la foi, la foi dans la vérité!’ ” (392.)

Such had been Mill’s sentiment at the beginning of 1836. Not quite a decade later, his long essay was free of censure of the politician. Rather, he cleared away the past with a reference to Guizot’s work as Foreign Minister in resolving the Anglo-French crisis after 1840: the statesman “to whom perhaps more than to any other it is owing that Europe is now at peace” (259). Mill could then get on with the business of publicizing Guizot as the most significant historian of the age. It was high time: the printed lectures being discussed were first delivered almost a generation before.

After the ritual comparison of the state of historical studies in France, Germany, and England (even “insular England” was, thanks to Coleridge and “the Oxford school of theologians,” stirring in the right direction [261]), Mill proposed that Guizot’s chief quality was that he asked the right questions. Thus he had been able in the early essays to tell more about the fall of Rome than had Gibbon. The laws, not the chronicles, contained the clue, when despotism destroyed the middle-class curiales, it extinguished the Empire’s vitality. Seeking the dynamic of civilization, Guizot found it in the “systematic antagonism” of ideas and institutions (269). The mark of Europe had always been complexity and competition. The spirit of liberty emerged not from the ancient world but from the barbarian invaders and was borne through the centuries by the struggles of the middle class. Mill accepted Guizot’s organization of European history into “the period of confusion, the feudal period, and the modern period” (274), which became a received view in the nineteenth century. He followed his argument without serious disagreement, save for the explanation of feudalism’s fall. This he thought unconvincing; he probably disliked its political implications. The feudal system succumbed, in Mill’s view, not because unequal claims and unequal power led to unequal rights and so to the acceptance of royal authority, but because pressure was exerted from the monarch above and the freemen below, and because feudalism “contained within itself a sufficient mixture of authority and liberty, afforded sufficient protection to industry, and encouragement and scope to the development of the human Edition: current; Page: [lxxvi] faculties, to enable the natural causes of social improvement to resume their course” (289).

“Writing the history of France,” Fustel de Coulanges was to say, “was a way of working for a party and fighting an adversary.”272 If Mill observed as much, he did not comment on it. He could not know that Guizot told Charles de Rémusat that his lectures at the Sorbonne (in 1820) were designed to “multiply ‘doctrinaires’ under the very fire of the enemy.”273 “On vient de suspendre mon cours,” Guizot wrote Barante, after the axe fell two years later. “Je regrette un peu cette petite tribune d’où j’exerçais encore quelque action directe sur des hommes qui se mêleront de l’avenir.”274 Mill appears not to have discerned any narrow political or social purpose in Guizot’s interpretation of the contradictions of the past working themselves out: national reconciliation on the terms of those who had borne liberty through the centuries and were best qualified to assure it.275 Guizot had affected an impartiality of tone unknown in Thierry, let alone Michelet. The essays and lectures appeared to be dispassionate, founded on immense reading, an explanation to a middle-class generation asking in the aftermath of an unprecedented cultural and political upheaval who they were and where they came from. Guizot saw himself engaged in the task of philosophical history, investigating not its “anatomy,” or its “physiognomy,” but its “physiology.” He was showing the interrelatedness of the events that made up the history of civilization. “Au commencement de ce cours,” he told the audience that attended his lectures on Saturday mornings, 1828-30:

Mill noted certain exaggerations; he put them down to the necessities of the lecture. The breadth of Guizot’s generalizations seemed to place them above particular pleading. With Guizot’s argument that French civilization exemplified better than any other the very essence of civilization (“C’est la plus complète, la plus vraie, la plus civilisée, pour ainsi dire”)277 Mill was in agreement. He did not so much question Guizot’s assumptions as share them. He, too, believed that history had a rational structure and so would yield to rational inquiry. He, too, believed that the history of Europe was the history of universal principles working their way through a variety of circumstances. Both of them believed in the phenomenon of the great man who affects the course of history in the service of the tendency of his time, who embodies the dominant principles of the age.

Guizot, however, was a Calvinist: he assumed the existence of God without claiming to know his motives or his precise effect on men’s actions. In opposition, deprived of his teaching post by the University, he had been inclined to minimize the latitude left to individuals. No other time, he said somewhat extravagantly, had been so marked by “l’empreinte de la fatalité.” Events seemed to happen by themselves: “jamais la conduite des choses humaines n’a plus complètement échappé aux hommes. . . . Ils ne sont aujourd’hui que de vieilles marionnettes effacées, absolument étrangères aux scènes que la Providence leur fait jouer.”278 In office, however, the specific purposes of the Almighty appeared rather more clear. “La mission des gouvernements,” Guizot told the Chamber on 3 May, 1837, “n’est pas laissée à leur choix, elle est réglée en haut. C’est la Providence qui détermine dans quelle étendue se passent les affaires d’un grand peuple.”279 And on the eve of assuming the powers of Prime Minister, in the eastern crisis of 1840, with war and peace in the balance, he reflected: “Nous sommes des instruments entre les mains d’une Puissance supérieure qui nous emploie, selon ou contre notre goût, à l’usage pour lequel elle nous a faits. . . .”280 But Providence was remote, men were responsible, they made their own history. All they had to bear in mind were the natural limits to their presumptions: “La bonne politique consiste à reconnaître d’avance ces nécessités naturelles qui, méconnues, deviendraient plus tard des leçons divines, et à y conformer de bonne grâce sa conduite.”281 Mill would not have put it that Edition: current; Page: [lxxviii] way, of course, but Guizot’s faith did not obviously intrude on his history. Despite the philosophy informing his conception of the past, he wrote something approaching what in the next century would be called “technical history.”282

Mill’s disappointment with Guizot’s intransigent conservatism may have followed from unwillingness to recognize the implication of the historian’s philosophy of history. The Germans, it has been said, conceived of history as “une lutte entre des principes opposées” without necessarily leading to the impasse of the July Monarchy.283 That may be so, but undeniably there was a spaciousness and a cosmopolitanism in Guizot, an austere parade of certainty and equanimity in this early work that appealed to Mill.284 He discerned consistency, comprehensiveness, maturity, the “entire absence of haste or crudity” as the hallmark of “a connected body of thought, speculations which, even in their unfinished state, may be ranked with the most valuable contributions yet made to universal history” (259). Possibly the fact that the lectures were incomplete, that the treacherous passages of modern history were not negotiated, averted more serious disagreement between Mill and Guizot. “The rapid sketch which occupies the concluding lectures of the first volume,” Mill noted, “does little towards resolving any of the problems in which there is real difficulty” (290).

The “manière ‘fataliste’ d’envisager l’histoire”285 that the pre-1830 liberals shared exercised an immense attraction for Mill partly because, to a point, he and they were bound on the same road, partly because they spoke so well and with such assurance. Guizot, as Sainte-Beuve said, put himself “insensiblement en lieu et place de la Providence.”286 A moralist, like Mill, he also saw the social destination in terms of political and constitutional arrangements. What Mill was evidently reluctant to concede—and how could it be proved true?—was the possibility that, in Emile Faguet’s formula,

In Mill, the reformer and the amateur of history were sometimes at odds. Guizot felt no such tension: the nineteenth century was the heir of a long struggle; the juste milieu must hold firm against careless new men and upstart ideologies. “L’histoire,” he remarked, “abât les prétentions impatientes et soutient les longues espérances.”288 This appeal to something like a moyenne if not a longue durée was Guizot’s principal attraction for Mill.289 The immediate political and social implications of it for his own time posed a problem. Thus Mill wished always to separate the politician from the historian, save for the moment around 1840 when, suppressing his previous criticisms, he achieved an unstable rationalization of his doubts about the man. In this way he kept his clear and generous view of the historian.290 Comparing him with Thierry, Mignet, Thiers, even with Vico, Herder and Condorcet, he considered Guizot to be “a man of a greater range of ideas and greater historical impartiality than most of these.” For his “immortal Essays and Lectures” posterity would “forgive him the grave faults of his political career” (185, 186). Mill had many contradictory thoughts about Guizot, but there is no reason to think he ever went back on that.

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MILL AND THE END OF THE JULY MONARCHY

coming to terms with guizot, as he seemed to do from the late 1830s, Mill was trying to come to terms with the July Monarchy. As the years passed and his health became indifferent, it was more difficult to sustain the same concern. The young liberals of the Bourbon restoration had dispersed variously to university chairs, archives, the ministerial bench. Saint-Simonism, imaginative and farsighted, so clear about what had actually happened in 1830, had quickly burnt itself out in sectarianism and scattered, part of it to pursue bizarre eccentricities, part of it powerfully to influence the national economy. Comte, like the Saint-Simonians, had revealed a strong anti-libertarian streak and been dropped. Carrel was dead. With Tocqueville relations were more distant. The press remained vigorous and combative. Though Marrast had grown more moderate after his period of exile in England, new opposition papers sprang up. The King and his ministers were harried without cease.291 Still, history was not repeating itself. Mill observed the scene more remotely. He maintained contact with a few friends in France, but he had little to say.

DUVEYRIER

Three years older than Mill, Duveyrier had come into his life with Gustave d’Eichthal as co-leader of the first mission sent by Père Enfantin to bring about the conversion of England. The Saint-Simonians believed that amidst the Reform Bill agitation England was about to pull down the last bastions of feudal power and so offer herself to the new teaching. Without having encouraged their embassy, Mill had been helpful once they arrived and handed them on to people he supposed might hear them out. He had made it plain he was unlikely to become a convert, though he read Le Globe, considered them “decidedly à la tête de la civilisation,” and thought their organization would one day be “the final and permanent condition of the human race.” He admired them and wished them well, but he kept his distance; their doctrine was “only one among a variety of interesting and important features in the time we live in.”292 Their optimistic reports to Enfantin were belied; England was not ripe. Mill did not make good his promise of articles on them for the Morning Chronicle. In the scandal of their prosecution, Duveyrier was specifically charged with outrage for the article “De la femme” he published in Le Globe in 1832 shortly before it ceased publication. Mill was cool, perhaps sensing the oddly regimented and ritualistic social Edition: current; Page: [lxxxi] arrangements in the barracks at Ménilmontant (lights out at 9:30 p.m., reveille at 4:30 a.m.).293 Nearly everything about the dispensation at Ménilmontant must have seemed alien to Mill, not merely the flamboyant dress and liturgy of the sect, but also the untoward scenes its exercises provoked when thousands of Parisians flocked out to observe the public rites of its priesthood.

In the trial, which took place on 27 and 28 August, 1832, Duveyrier had a prominent role. The son of the premier président of the Cour Royale at Montpellier, he had studied the Christian mystics and, in observance of the Saint-Simonian rule that each member proclaim his acceptance of responsibility before God and man by bearing his name on his breast, had affected the inscription “Charles, poète de Dieu.” At one moment during the proceedings, he caused a sensation by pointing to a group of lawyers in the visitors’ section of the courtroom and shouting, “I told them when I came in that I am being charged with saying that everyone was living in a state of prostitution and adultery, but you are in fact all living in that state. Well, have the courage to say so out loud. That is the only way you can defend us.”294 Like Enfantin and Michel Chevalier, Duveyrier was sentenced to a year in prison and a fine of 1000 francs. The organization was ordered dissolved. Duveyrier, however, obtained a pardon through his family, probably, as Mill supposed, by renouncing allegiance to Enfantin.295 With d’Eichthal, he went off to Naples for a time before returning to Paris and a career in journalism and writing for the theatre. He assured Mill that although he had not changed “a single opinion,” he had changed “his whole line of conduct.”296 Mill, however, appeared to be more surprised than pleased by the news of Duveyrier’s apparent defection. The report that some of the faithful had set out for the Bosphorus “pour chercher la femme libre suggested greater madness than I had imputed to them.”297

Mill’s correspondence contains no further reference to him, but he evidently kept up with Duveyrier’s activity. Two books appeared, the first in 1842 and the second in 1843. In the spring of 1844, Mill began his article on the second of them, Lettres politiques, a collection of Duveyrier’s pamphlets. He told Napier, “It is the last I mean to write, for the present on any French topic—& its subject is, not French history or literature, but present French politics, introducing, however, remarks & speculations of a more general character.”298 This was one Edition: current; Page: [lxxxii] more mirror held up to view the reflection of representative government and its dilemmas in the aftermath of the Revolution and in the presence of democracy.

France remained instructive because it had swept away all the institutions other nations were then only dismantling and had a “passion for equality almost as strong” as that of the United States (297). Disapproving Duveyrier’s flattery of the crown and the government, Mill was more open to his acceptance of the existing constitution and his insistence that the question was how to make the system work efficiently, how to free electors, ministers, and people from the burden of corruption. Everywhere, including England, “Sincere Democrats are beginning to doubt whether the desideratum is so much an increased influence of popular opinion, as a more enlightened use of the power which it already possesses.” But he condemned the narrow suffrage in France, the repressive legislation, “the disgraceful manner” in which the system worked (300). He was receptive to Duveyrier’s suggestion that the landed proprietors should be encouraged back into public life alongside the bourgeoisie; that trained functionaries be guaranteed “fixity,” responsibility, and adequate salaries; and that the electoral process be permitted to operate absolutely without official meddling. He remarked that this vision of a society presided over by a neo-Saint-Simonian élite was “a favourable specimen” of French thought applied to the practical problems of government (313).

To Duveyrier’s parallel argument that, since the old foreign policies were as defunct as the old régimes, France must abandon territorial ambitions and the revanchism dating from 1815 and join with the other great powers to bring about political and economic peace through arbitration and mediation, Mill was not receptive. He thought such interventionism unwise, though superior to war. He gave no hint of anticipating the trend of international co-operation that was to gather strength through the second half of the century.299 Nor did he show confidence in Duveyrier’s suggestions that government arbitrate labour-management disputes, though he approved the programme of “justice and compromise.” The tone here was quiet, interested, but faintly disabused. Mill neither accepted the political quiescence of Duveyrier nor suggested the need for drastic change. He believed that the problems of representation were similar in England and France, but more sharply defined and more clearly observed in the French context. Neither Duveyrier nor Mill gave the least hint of an upheaval soon to come. Duveyrier argued specifically against the utility of another such event. It would be more than a dozen years before Mill conceded, not just for England Edition: current; Page: [lxxxiii] with its tradition of compromise and its history of successful opposition to monarchical absolutism, but for every nation, the rightness of working for improvement within the prevailing arrangements.300 But it was less Charles Duveyrier, or John Austin, than the events of 1848 that convinced him.

MILL AND THE REVOLUTION OF 1848

ten months before Louis Philippe was forced to abdicate, Mill remarked to Austin that while doubtless he, living in France, was “much impressed with the unfavourable side” of France after a number of revolutions, with vulgar lower-class ambition and other “disgusting” manners, he (Mill) often thought England’s “torpid mind” would profit from “the general shake-up” of revolution. He gave no hint of thinking that France would profit from a renewal of the experience. In April 1847, the overall prospect there struck him as fair: the people were generally free of tyranny, justice was “easily accessible,” and there were “the strongest inducements to personal prudence & forethought.” Not even a well-intentioned government, but only revolution (that is, 1830) could have achieved as much.301 He seemed to be reassessing the July Monarchy again. The remarks were puzzling. Mill made no allusion to the serious depression of 1845-47: an immense fall in French production, large-scale unemployment, a substantial part of the swollen population in the capital on relief, great rural distress and unrest. In three months the first of the electoral reform banquets, devised to circumvent the restrictive law on political associations, was held on 9 July at the Château-Rouge, the famous dancehall in Montmartre, with 1200 constituents and eighty-five deputies in attendance; almost seventy banquets took place outside Paris before the end of the year. Mill of course was by no means exceptional in apprehending no general crisis; others closer to the scene than he were hardly less unaware.302 But his observations were indicative of the concentration of his thought on the political process. He had never looked very far past the political scene in the capital. Thus he missed the profound movement that was taking place in the country. He followed the press to some extent, a steady diet of scandal and complaint, an endless skirmishing between the government and the opposition. There is no evidence that he noted the near-unity of the varieties of opposition in the banquet campaign as a possible signal that a trial of strength was at hand.

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The explosion took him by surprise. Guizot was dismissed on 23 February; the King abdicated next day. “I am hardly yet out of breath from reading and thinking about it,” Mill reported on 29 February. “Nothing can possibly exceed the importance of it to the world or the immensity of the interests which are at stake on its success.” He saw the Revolution in political terms: the King and his ministers had provoked “the people” by forbidding the Paris banquet; the republicans had triumphed “because at last they had the good sense to raise the standard not of a republic but of something in which the middle classes could join, viz., electoral reform.” Should they succeed in creating “reasonable republican government, all the rest of Europe, except England and Russia, will be republicanised in ten years, and England itself probably before we die.” But he saw three problems ahead: the possibility of war, the matter of socialism, the question of leadership. First, Lamartine might be propelled into war with Austria as the result of popular pressure to help the Milanese expel the Habsburg occupant from Lombardy. Second, “Communism,” by which he evidently meant everything from Fourierism to Proudhonism,303 had taken “deep root” in the country and in the republican ranks. How, despite the vague announcement that the Provisional Government would establish ateliers nationaux, would the new men make good their promise to provide “work and good wages to the whole labouring class”? Third, Marrast and even the former Orleanist Lamartine (“who would ever have thought it—Lamartine!”) were well enough as ministers, but something was missing: “In my meditations and feelings on the whole matter, every second thought has been of Carrel—he who perhaps alone in Europe was qualified to direct such a movement. . . . Without Carrel, or, I fear, any one comparable to him, the futurity of France and of Europe is most doubtful.” His words suggested again the excitement of 1830, but muted, infused with only a limited awareness of the enormous social problems, qualified by doubt about the middle-aged men of the Provisional Government. “There never was a time,” Mill thought, “when so great a drama was being played out in one generation.”304

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After Lamartine had moved to assure Europe that France would not abet a war of Italian liberation,305 Mill was satisfied the government would act wisely. If there was to be “a good deal of experimental legislation, some of it not very prudent,” he noted unenthusiastically, “there cannot be a better place to try such experiments in than France.” He was sure that the “regulation of industry in behalf of the labourers” would fail as it had “in behalf of the capitalist,” or at least be trimmed to “its proper limits.” But he was greatly confident that what would be tried “relating to labour & wages” would “end in good.”306 In early March he made a public defence of the government’s action in the Spectator.307 But through the stormy spring of demonstrations, attempted coups, intense debate on the social question, national elections with universal male suffrage, and rising discontent among the swiftly growing army of the urban unemployed, he made no further comment.

As it happened, the drama of the Revolution was reaching its climax with the elections to a National Assembly. The broad tide of rural conservatism that came in was in protest against neglect of the interests of the countryside by an urban leadership. Mill’s reaction is not recorded.308 To judge from Harriet Taylor’s remarks, however,309 he may well have approved of, first, the moderate course pursued against radical opinion, and, second, the conservative Executive Commission selected by the Assembly to replace the Provisional Government. In his view, Lamartine, now out of office, had done no more than repeat the Girondist strategy of calling in provincial France to hold the line against the revolutionary political clubs of Paris. In fact, the Revolution was now bound on a course leading to destruction of the Republic.

Mill followed events distantly. He knew that Marrast was no longer at the National, had left the Government, and was Mayor of Paris (he was also the real leader of the majority in the Executive Commission). Mill nevertheless sent him a copy of his Principles of Political Economy, published on 25 April, saying he knew Marrast might not have time to read it but might perhaps have others do so, and asked if he could use his influence to have the National take his articles, as “lettres d’un Anglais,” which would be done in the newspaper’s style. The moment was as ill-chosen as Mill’s expression of his “sympathie profonde” for Edition: current; Page: [lxxxvi] “l’oeuvre de régénération sociale qui se poursuit maintenant en France” was inappropriate to the reaction then under way in the country, the Assembly, and the Government, and to which Marrast was no stranger.310 The Mayor was up to his neck in politics and the situation in Paris was extremely volatile. Within a few days, on 15 May, an abortive left-wing coup d’état occurred: the Assembly was invaded by a mob and some of the crowd went on to the Hôtel de Ville. There the security chief, an old friend of one of the leaders, Armand Barbès, admitted this rag-tag band. Marrast was evidently not very upset; he temporized, summoned military assistance, and at length sent word through his secretary that the invaders should leave: “Que Barbès fasse au plus tôt cesser cette comédie, il va être arrêté d’un moment à l’autre.”311 It was farce, but it was indicative of what was on Marrast’s mind.

Mill could have no knowledge of the extraordinary political manoeuvrings in Paris. When he assured Marrast of his “sympathie profonde,” he could not have understood that the tide had turned. Alarmed by the numbers of unemployed men in the city, the government announced its intention of closing the ateliers nationaux. With that, a spontaneous working-class insurrection was mounted against it, on 23-26 June. The pitched battles that took place made it the bloodiest fratricidal rising the capital had known. The government was legitimately defending itself, but the repression was severe and the social fears unleashed were exaggerated. A confusion of motives and hostilities were at the origin of this disastrous collision, in the course of which the Executive Commission retired, leaving General Eugène Cavaignac chief of the executive power, for all practical purposes dictator, with a new ministry round him.312 Mill made no comment, but in August he lashed out publicly against the English enemies of the Republic and the misrepresentation of events. Alluding to the régime’s “first difficulties” and the dangers of “an indefinite succession of disorders, repressed only by a succession of illegal violences on the part of the government,” he denied (mistakenly) tales of “horrible barbarity” having taken Edition: current; Page: [lxxxvii] place in the June Days. He had confidence in the “mildness and moderation of the sincere republican party,” and in Cavaignac.313 But he saw the possibility that such troubles would result in the French permitting their Republic “to be filched from them by artifice . . . under the ascendancy of some popular chief, or under the panic caused by insurrection.”314

Within days, this rough prophecy began to be borne out. Mill was particularly sensitive to the attack on the press, asking whether in such circumstances Socialists and Monarchists could “be reproached for using their arms.”315 His sympathies lay with Lamartine (whose Histoire des Girondins he had been reading with approval), the former Provisional Government, “and many of the party who adhere to them.” He was favourable also to the Jacobin-Socialist Louis Blanc,316 a member of the February ministry, author of the droit au travail decree (“Le Gouvernement provisoire de la République française s’engage à garantir l’existence de l’ouvrier par le travail . . .”) that had been forced on the moderate ministers on 25 February by fear of the street crowds to whom Blanc owed his ministerial post. As President of the ill-starred Commission du Luxembourg that sought unsuccessfully to grapple with unemployment and the whole range of industrial relations until it and the ateliers nationaux (more akin, in the event, to ateliers de charité) could be shut down in June, Blanc found himself falsely accused of aiding and abetting Armand Barbès and those on the extreme left who had staged the futile coup d’état manqué of 15 May. In the immediate aftermath of the June Days, Marrast led the attack on him: he was indicted in the prevailing reaction that had developed steadily following the conservative results of the general election for a Constituent Assembly on 23 April. On 26 August, the Assembly voted to lift Blanc’s parliamentary immunity so that he could be tried on charges of having conspired with the crowd that invaded the Assembly on 15 May. Whether or not the confused events of that day were a trap sprung by the right (among the noisy demonstrators was the police-spy Aloysius Huber), Blanc, despite the appeals made to him to join the émeutiers, neither instigated nor encouraged the invasion of the Palais Bourbon and was not even present at the Hôtel de Ville. Rather than stand trial in the unpromising climate of opinion, he slipped away and was permitted to take the Edition: current; Page: [lxxxviii] train to Ghent; he was arrested there briefly, and then at once crossed over to England.317

Blanc’s was a singular case: since the publication of his L’organisation du travail (1840), he had been peculiarly marked out for retribution by those who feared and hated his proposals for social reform, the popular forces that put him into the Provisional Government in February, and the implications, at least, of the Luxembourg Commission and the workshops. Mill, without the possibility of knowing in detail what had happened during the months since February, considered Blanc and the other former ministers to be exemplary tribunes. But it was too late for them. In the election for the presidency of the Republic that December, Lamartine was swept aside, the radical candidates trailed distantly, and even Cavaignac was handily defeated by Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. The great mass of the electorate, peasants, voted against the republicans they blamed for disregarding their grievances and increasing their taxes; they voted for a legendary name, as did much of the urban population and a majority of the political notables. “It is a great deal,” Guizot observed, “to be simultaneously a national glory, a revolutionary guarantee, and a principle of authority.”318

In this situation, Mill’s energies were given to defending the defunct February régime against its Tory critics; it was one more skirmish on behalf of reform. Outdistanced by events in France, won over by what he called the “legitimate Socialism” of Louis Blanc,319 he attacked Brougham’s version of the Revolution: Brougham’s assessment of the Provisional Government was a caricature, and his estimate of Guizot’s ministry exaggeratedly favourable; and thus the outbreak of revolution in his account was virtually inexplicable. In Mill’s view, the spirit of compromise and justice Duveyrier had proposed France must accept had not been realized; the Republic had come too soon, preceded by too little education for it and too great a fear of 1793. The Lamartine government had done the best they could in the situation with which they had been confronted. His analysis was political; he showed no strong sense of the social dimensions of the upheaval. “Their great task,” he said, “was to republicanize the public mind” (335). If there were errors, they were committed less by the government than by the political clubs. If Lamartine had served notice that the treaties of 1814-15 Edition: current; Page: [lxxxix] must be revised and that suppressed nationalities had the right to seek military assistance for their liberation, still the government’s foreign policy had been peaceful.

Mill met criticism of the droit au travail decree by arguing that such a right was absolute, though practicable only where men gave up the other right “of propagating the species at their own discretion” (350). He asserted the justice of socialism and the need for the state to create “industrial communities on the Socialist principle” (352), if only as an educational experience. Mill knew little of the intrigues about the ateliers nationaux, which he defended, as he cleared Blanc of responsibility for their closing. Once again, his point was that the experiment had been made before adequate preparation could take place.320 It had divided republicans and terrified the bourgeoisie: “These things are lamentable; but the fatality of circumstances, more than the misconduct of individuals is responsible for them” (354). Finally, he took issue with Brougham’s insular view that sound political institutions cannot be legislated into existence. His answer was that, ready or not for the Republic, France had to attempt the experiment. He did not regret the Assembly’s decision to abandon a second chamber in the new constitution adopted in November 1848. He thought universal suffrage had, if anything, returned too conservative a majority. Far from blindly following Paris, the provinces had too much curbed the city, “almost the sole element of progress which exists, politically speaking, in France” (360). Though he accepted Brougham’s view that no legislature should try to exercise executive power, he opposed popular election of the chief of government as being unlikely to select an eminent politician. This, of course, Louis Napoleon had not been. And he predicted accurately that “the appointment of a President by the direct suffrages of the community, will prove to be the most serious mistake which the framers of the French Constitution have made” (362).

Within the limits of what could then be known, Mill’s discussion was fair enough. But he perceived the great rural and urban problems dimly; his concern was with representative government. Continental socialism had thrust itself on his attention late in the day: he had been ambivalent about Fourier and hostile to Proudhon, he knew little of Cabet and Blanc until 1848.321 His vision of the Provisional Government was simplistic; he saw Lamartine somewhat through the haze of his highly coloured Histoire des Girondins; he made no comment on Marrast’s evolution from radical journalism to the defence of law and order at the Edition: current; Page: [xc] Hôtel de Ville.322 His implied point of reference seemed to be 1789-91, modified by the appearance of “legitimate Socialism.” Disappointment was inevitable. He nonetheless discerned warning signs, and was confirmed sooner than he anticipated by Louis Napoleon’s progress to dictatorship. Carrel had been tempted by Bonapartism; Mill never was. Louis Napoleon he branded “a stupid, ignorant adventurer who has thrown himself entirely into the hands of the reactionary party, &, but that he is too great a fool, would have some chance by these means of making himself emperor.”323 There, of course, he was wrong. He did not guess that this man could calmly, with little artifice and no panic, “filch” the Republic.324 He was wrong in imagining that Victor Considérant and the Fourierists (among socialists “much the most sensible and enlightened both in the destructive, & in the constructive parts of their system”)325 could seriously weigh upon the proceedings in the Assembly.

Not least, Mill did not see that the tremendous power of the liberal press, durable and resilient, had almost come to an end. He did not understand what it meant that the National had become the unofficial newspaper of the Provisional Government: that men like Marrast had become part of the new establishment. He was disturbed by the repression of the opposition journals, but did not fully grasp that universal suffrage had swept the petite and moyenne bourgeoisies aside. He did not see what it meant that Bonaparte had been elected President against the majority of the press, that the extraordinary force it had been ever since 1814 was finished.326 Perhaps the surface indications were misleading. The constitution of 4 November, 1848, was the most democratic France had ever had, with universal manhood suffrage, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of petition. Even the droit au travail was alluded to in the preamble.327 A revolution had taken place. But Cavaignac, for one, doubted that the country was republican, and the election of Louis Napoleon suggested he was Edition: current; Page: [xci] right. Pressed to pre-empt the election results by coup d’état, Cavaignac refused: the Republic might succumb, he said, but it would rise again, “whereas the republic would be lost forever if the one who represented it should give the example of revolt against the will of the country.”328 It was left to Mill’s friend, Marrast, President of the Assembly, to proclaim Bonaparte President of the Republic. “Tocqueville,” the British Ambassador, Lord Normanby, noted in his diary the next day, “rather quaintly, said to me yesterday, ‘There only remains now one question, whether it is the Republicans or the Republic itself which the country cannot abide.”’329

By the summer of 1851, Mill was “for the first time downhearted about French affairs.”330 When, some time later, Louis Napoleon made himself dictator, then Emperor, and finally the ally of England, he was pained. The Revolution of 1848 faded into the past. The only point of its being recalled in Normanby’s memoirs, with their “calomnies ridicules et atroces,” Mill wrote, was that they offered Louis Blanc an opportunity to set the record straight.331 The new Girondins, Lamartine and his colleagues, had tried the experiment; France had not been ready for it. So tyranny once more settled on the country. And if the government of England had progressed so little as barely to restrain itself from co-operating in running Napoleon’s enemies to the ground, “such is the state of the world ten years after 1848 that even this must be felt as a great victory.”332

for more than twenty years, Mill had observed and commented on the politics of contemporary France, had studied and sought to explain to Englishmen the constructive nature of the great Revolution in whose name much of the social and political struggle of the nineteenth century was taking place. The young French historians who boldly celebrated the Revolution as prologue to the apparent triumph of liberalism forty or so years later, or who explained the present as the outcome of the liberal impulse working its way through the centuries, he acclaimed as the best of the time. The French scene was animated, Edition: current; Page: [xcii] creative, disputatious, sometimes explosive, but always instructive. It was his self-imposed task to try to make Englishmen see through the haze of their insularities and prejudices the essential lessons that France offered to all who shared in the common civilization. Some part of his special certainty about the relevance of France to English society flowed from his own peculiar acquaintance with the land and the people and their thought; some part was surely no more than the intelligent appraisal of intrinsic fact. But time carried away both the observer and the observed. As the mid-century approached, it was apparent to him that the Revolution was more complex and its meaning more ambiguous than he had thought; it was clear that the young philosophical historians had begun to take their place in the historiographical museum, that their works were after all pièces d’occasion; it was evident that the imminent triumph of liberalism had again been delayed and that other struggles must one day be fought; it was obvious that Mill’s own interest in history had shifted onto quite another plane of regularities and laws and predictive capacity, leaving the Revolution and its portents not so much diminished as more spaciously situated in a vast ongoing historical process.

Despite his didactic purpose and immediate political and social concerns, Mill was too good a student of the past to permit disappointments and setbacks to break his commitment to France as the touchstone of Europe. He was far from being uncritical, he was by no means unprejudiced, he had his blind-spots. But he never went back on his conviction that, whatever the aberration of the moment, France and its destiny were central to civilization. By 1849, many hopes had foundered, and he felt it keenly that men had failed or been removed prematurely from the scene. He knew that the immense expectations of 1830 would never come again, that the social and political process was infinitely more complex and its desired outcome infinitely less assured in the foreseeable future than he and his young friends had imagined in the excitements of Paris that summer nearly twenty years before. He remained watchful but publicly silent, his former impulse to interpret the news from France now quite gone. For Mill at the mid-century, great swings of hopefulness and despair concerning France and democracy lay ahead, but for the moment that was all.

Edition: current; Page: [xciii]

Textual Introduction

JOHN M. ROBSON

though mill is properly celebrated as a political philosopher, logician, and economist, throughout his work one finds evidence of an intense interest in history. Indeed his first childhood writings, prompted by his father’s History of British India, which was composed at the table across which the child worked at his lessons, were histories of India, Rome, and Holland. He never wrote a history in his adult years, but rather occupied himself with the philosophy of history and with the implications of that philosophy for social theory and practical politics. While he took great interest in British and classical history (see especially Volumes VI and XI of the Collected Works), his principal concentration was on French history, particularly in its social and political manifestations. Rich evidence of his fascination with French affairs is to be found throughout his works, especially in his newspaper writings and letters, as well as in the details of his life, from his boyhood visit to Pompignan and Montpellier in 1820-21 to his death in Avignon in 1873.

French history had the immediacy of current politics, for he first read of the Revolution of 1789 in the midst of his apprenticeship in British radicalism, and dreamt of being a British Girondist.1 Later, when he was seeking an independent role for himself as a radical journalist, the Revolution of 1830 gave him a model in the young republicans, especially Armand Carrel. During and after the struggle for the English Reform Act of 1832, Mill followed and wrote about French politics, always keeping an eye on parallels with and lessons for Britain. The Revolution of 1848 again found an advocate in him, his growing interest in socialism being so stimulated by the experiments during the short-lived republic that he modified crucial passages in his Principles of Political Economy for its second edition of 1849 and more thoroughly for the third edition of 1852. One could cite much more evidence of various kinds, but the essays gathered in this volume give proof enough of both his interest and his understanding; reference to other volumes in the edition will further confirm the assertions just made.

The eleven essays in the main text and a twelfth, which appears as Appendix A, were published between April 1826, just before Mill’s twentieth birthday, and Edition: current; Page: [xciv] April 1849, just before his forty-third. In provenance they are less diverse than those in other volumes of this edition, seven having appeared in the Westminster Review, two in the Monthly Repository, and three in the Edinburgh Review. Chronology provides apt groupings: (1) of those in the Westminster, three were published between 1826 and 1828, during its first period, before the Mills withdrew over disagreement with the editorial policy and practice of John Bowring; indeed the third of these, Mill’s review of Scott’s Life of Napoleon, was his last contribution until his own editorship. (2) The two in the Monthly Repository (1832 and 1835) were written during the hiatus between his periods of contribution to the Westminster. (3) The next three (1836-37) are again to be located in sets of the Westminster (one, Appendix A, during the brief life of the London Review, the other two in the London and Westminster). (4) When in 1840 he relinquished the London and Westminster, he immediately began writing for the Edinburgh, where his greatest essays (1844-46) were those on French history.2 (5) Then, finally so far as this volume is concerned, his defence of the French Revolution of 1848 was assigned to the Westminster, in recognition of the essay’s radical compatibility with his old periodical ground.

THE EARLY WESTMINSTER ESSAYS

nothing is known about the composition of the first two essays, “Mignet’s French Revolution” and “Modern French Historical Works,” which appeared in successive issues of the Westminster (April and July 1826) during one of Mill’s most intensely active periods. He had probably just finished editing Jeremy Bentham’s Rationale of Judicial Evidence, which appeared in five volumes in 1827; he was contributing long essays both to the Westminster and to the Parliamentary History and Review; he was very active in the London Debating Society and in the early morning discussion group at George Grote’s house; and he was working his way upward in the India Office (his salary was raised to £100 per annum in May 1827 and then he leaped ahead in position and salary to £600 in 1828).3

The review of Mignet shows by direct statement and implication the young Mill’s awareness of the sources for French history; it also demonstrates his control of the language in that, though he cites the English translation of Mignet in the heading to the article, the quotations (which are extensive, occupying over fifty percent of the text) are not taken from that translation, but are rendered in Edition: current; Page: [xcv] his own words. (This practice of translating extensive passages came to characterize Mill’s reviews, in accordance with his purpose of making the historians known; it also made the reviews easier to write for one who translated with such facility.) It is also worth noting that he promises (on behalf of the Westminster) to go more generally into the question of the French Revolution in a later number; he kept this promise to some extent in his review of Scott two years later, but one can infer his desire, finally abandoned only when Carlyle took up the task, to write a history of that revolution.

Neither the review of Mignet nor “Modern French Historical Works,” the article that appeared in the next number of the Westminster, presents any special textual problem. The latter concentrates on an earlier period in European history, the age of chivalry, and Mill uses the opportunity to assert that the English have more need of “monitors than adulators,” because French literature (in which category he would, of course, include history) has surpassed English, especially in that the French write not merely to say something, but because they have something to say (17). He manages thus to combine the habitual Westminster line on history, politics, and literature with his own bias towards the French. Varied sources, English and French, illustrate Mill’s claim to mastery of the issues—at least it seems likely that the review’s readers would not infer its author to be a twenty-year-old with no formal academic training.

Impressive as these two articles are, the third in this group, “Scott’s Life of Napoleon” (April 1828), is much more mature. Bain calls it a “masterpiece,” saying that in execution “it is not unworthy to be compared with the Sedgwick and Whewell articles,”4 and indeed it would not be out of place in Dissertations and Discussions with those better known essays. Given pride of first place in the Westminster,5 its ample scope (sixty-three pages of the Westminster) shows that the editor was nothing loath to give the young Mill his head. The article, Mill says,

cost me more labour than any previous; but it was a labour of love, being a defence of the early French Revolutionists against the Tory misrepresentations of Sir Walter Scott, in the introduction to his Life of Napoleon. The number of books which I read for this purpose, making notes and extracts—even the number I had to buy (for in those days there was no public or subscription library from which books of reference could be taken home), far exceeded the worth of the immediate object; but I had at that time a half formed intention of writing a History of the French Revolution; and though I never executed it, my collections afterwards were very useful to Carlyle for a similar purpose.6

Some evidence of his reading has survived in a letter of 1 January, 1828, to Charles Comte, whom he had met in Paris through J.B. Say some years earlier. Edition: current; Page: [xcvi] He remarks that he has been working for a long time on the review, and asks Comte’s help with a task beyond his powers and knowledge, one he has taken on only because—a constant refrain in his writings on France—the English are so ignorant of their neighbour’s history. His reading, he says, has included most of the memoirs (presumably he refers to the massive Collection des mémoires relatifs à la révolution française that appeared in the 1820s) as well as Mignet, Toulongeon, “et autres” (later to Carlyle he says he had read the first two volumes of Montgaillard for the Scott review).7 The review contains long extracts in French, taken usually from sources ignored by Scott, who is heavily criticized for errors, ignorance, and Tory bias, but Mill concludes with a statement that he feels no hostility towards Scott, “for whom, politics apart,” he has “that admiration which is felt by every person possessing a knowledge of the English language” (110).8 The words I have italicized reveal the main force of the account. Mill’s particular personal bias shows in the extensive treatment given to the Gironde (98-109), towards whom, he says, Scott has, not untypically, been unjust: “of none have the conduct and aims been so miserably misunderstood, so cruelly perverted” (98). Evidently pleased with the article himself, he had offprints made, sending some to Charles Comte in Paris;9 these are textually identical with the original. And many years later, near the end of his life, he still clearly remembered the article (though not its date), writing to Emile Acollas about views he had held since youth: “en 1827 (alors même j’avais beaucoup étudié la Révolution française) j’ai publié un article dans la revue de Westminster où j’ai soutenu par des preuves irrécusables précisément votre thèse, savoir que l’attaque a toujours été du côté de la Contre Révolution et que la Révolution n’a fait que se défendre.”10

ESSAYS IN THE MONTHLY REPOSITORY

the first of these, “Alison’s History of the French Revolution” (July and August 1833), shows in its recorded history and text the influence of Mill’s new and overbearing friend, Thomas Carlyle, whose presence will be seen in most of the essays from the 1830s here reprinted. Their letters early in 1833 deal with a multitude of personal and intellectual matters, one of which was history (Mill had been reading, for example, some manuscript pages of Grote’s History of Greece, the first volumes of which appeared only in 1846). In the spring, Mill Edition: current; Page: [xcvii] asked Carlyle about the advisability of reading and reviewing Alison’s work.11 Encouraged by Carlyle, he hoped to have an article ready for the June number of the Monthly Repository, but completed it only in time for it to appear in two parts, as the conclusion of the July number and the opening piece in that for August. He reported to Carlyle that the review was not worth his perusal and that it would have been better to wait until it could all appear at once. “I shall in future,” he adds, “never write on any subject which my mind is not full of when I begin to write; unless the occasion is such that it is better the thing were ill done than not at all, that being the alternative.”12 Perusal of the article, in spite of Mill’s warning, must have been ego-warming to Carlyle, for it begins with a long quotation from his “Biography” (identified as to title and provenance, though not as to author), and the same essay is quoted later, as is a passage from a private letter Carlyle wrote to Mill on 13 January, 1833 (the source of which is not identified). Mill continued, as will be shown below, this habit of quoting overtly and covertly from Carlyle until their disagreements came to outweigh their mutual admiration (always more sincere on Mill’s side).

The second of Mill’s articles in the Monthly Repository on French matters appeared in June 1835, at another time of intense activity. He was strenuously occupied in bringing out the first issues of the London Review, which he not only edited, but wrote extensively for: in the first number, for April, appeared his “Sedgwick” and “Postscript”; in the second, for July, his “Tennyson,” “Rationale of Representation,” and “Parliamentary Proceedings of the Session.” He was also writing in the Globe, was presumably still recovering from the shock of having been responsible for the burning in March of the manuscript of the first volume of Carlyle’s French Revolution, and was planning a trip in Germany for July and August. It is not surprising, then, that “The Monster Trial,” as he entitled his article (after the French procès monstre), occupies only four pages of the Monthly Repository. Its brevity, however, does not imply insignificance, for he touches on major concerns, especially freedom of the press. He also asserts again that the English are negligent of French affairs; only the Examiner has, in the last four years, “placed carefully” before its readers “the passing events . . . with regular explanatory comments” (125)—of course written by Mill himself. He in fact then quotes a long passage from his own article of 26 January, 1834,13Edition: current; Page: [xcviii] on the persecution of the French republicans, with whom he had acquaintance (as is indicated by the mention of his having been in Paris when the manifesto of the Société des Droits de l’Homme was issued) and also much sympathy.

ESSAYS IN THE LONDON AND WESTMINSTER REVIEW

after 1834, Mill’s disillusionment with the course of French politics in the age of the juste milieu, as well as his increasing involvement in British politics, where he thought (quite mistakenly) that the time had come for Radical sharing of power if not indeed leadership, led him away from public comment on contemporary French events, though not on the history of France and its historians. So, early in the career of his own journal, the London Review (later the London and Westminster), Mill requested from Joseph Blanco White a review of Guizot’s Lectures on European Civilization, which appeared in the number for January 1836. In the event, Mill was a joint author of the article (which we therefore print here as an appendix). Just how much he contributed is not certain, though his extant letters to White are helpful in this respect, showing Mill as an editor supple, if determined, in his relations with contributors. On 21 October, 1835, he wrote to White:

Your article on Guizot is excellent as far as it goes but something seems still wanting to give a complete notion of the nature & value of Guizot’s historical speculations. I will not ask you to take in hand again a subject of which I do not wonder that you should be tired, but if you would permit me, I should like much to add, mostly at the end of the article, a few more observations & specimens—especially that noble analysis of the feudal system in Lecture 4 of the first volume. The whole should then be submitted for your approval, either in MS, or in type. If you consent to this do not trouble yourself to write only on purpose to say so as I shall consider silence as consent.14

The comment in a letter to Henry S. Chapman, asking that the article be set and proof sent as soon as possible, indicates a somewhat different judgment. He refers to an essay by John Robertson “and another (the one on Guizot which I have, I think, with tolerable success) manufactured from a so-so article into a good one.”15 The silky tone returns, however, in the next letter to White:

I have now the pleasure of sending you a proof of the article on Guizot, in which I hope you will point out every, the smallest, thought or expression to which you in the slightest degree object, will make any suggestions for the improvement of the article, & which may occur to you. I think it will be very interesting & instructive & it is a kind of article which the review much wanted.

Perhaps the few remarks which I have inserted near the beginning of the article, respecting M. Guizot’s political conduct, are not sufficiently in the tone & spirit of the rest of the article—if you think so, pray cancel them & substitute anything which you prefer—but it strikes me that something on that topic was wanted in that place.

Edition: current; Page: [xcix]

I return, at the same time, a few pages of your MS, which I was obliged to omit in order to make room for what I added & to render the general character of the article less discursive.16

Since Mill listed the article in his bibliography of published writings, one may assume that White accepted the version given him. On internal evidence and that of these letters, one may speculate that the portions by Mill are those at 369.33-370.16, 384.14-389.15, and 392.4 to the end.

The next article in this volume has a personal character, for it marks the real culmination of Mill’s friendly relations with one of the strongest influences on him in the 1830s. In “Carlyle’s French Revolution,” after praising Carlyle’s “creative imagination,” Mill lauds also his research, and adds: “We do not say this at random, but from a most extensive acquaintance with his materials, with his subject, and with the mode in which it has been treated by others” (138). He could with justice have gone further, and asserted his intimate knowledge of the author and his writings, for Mill and Carlyle had indeed come to know one another well from the time when Carlyle thought Mill’s “The Spirit of the Age” signalled the appearance of a “new mystic” available for discipleship. The most recent manifestation of their friendship had been Mill’s soliciting of Carlyle’s “Parliamentary History of the French Revolution,” for the April 1837 issue of the London and Westminster. An editorial note to that article, however, adumbrated differences that were to surface later: Mill indicated that some opinions expressed by Carlyle were not consonant with the review’s attitudes, which would likely be developed in the next number.17 That promise was fulfilled, though not through emphasized disagreement, in Mill’s highly laudatory review of Carlyle’s French Revolution.

That the article appeared so quickly is indicative of Mill’s strength of will (surely motivated in part by remorse over the destruction of Carlyle’s manuscript), for, though Carlyle had arranged in January that Mill would receive unbound sheets of the book to expedite a review, it seems that only at the end of April did Mill receive the “first copy” the printer could get bound.18 And if he had been busy before, he must now have been nearly frantic: in addition to running the London and Westminster, he had published in it in January his Edition: current; Page: [c] review of Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd, in April his articles on Fonblanque and (with Grote) on Taylor, and in July, along with the Carlyle review, he contributed “The Spanish Question” (with Joseph Blanco White); further, although he was on a walking tour in Wales during part of September and October, the October number contained his “Parties and the Ministry” and “Armand Carrel.” Most significantly, he was, especially from June to August, working hard at his System of Logic, to that end reading Whewell’s History of the Inductive Sciences, rereading Herschel’s Discourse, and becoming excited over the first two volumes of Auguste Comte’s Cours de philosophie positive. He was also now, after his father’s death in mid-1836, the male head of a large family. In the circumstances, it is not surprising that the review of Carlyle shows some signs of haste, most evidently in the length of the quoted extracts.

Mill’s not including the essay in Dissertations and Discussions may appear somewhat odd, in view of his statements that it was one of few in the London and Westminster that achieved their intended goals, in this case to make a strong claim for Carlyle’s genius before others had a chance to deny it.19 The claim is repeated in the part of the Autobiography drafted seventeen years later,20 by which time there was quite enough evidence of the distance between them practically and ideologically; there is not much indication that between 1854 and 1859, when Dissertations and Discussions appeared, their relations, already bad, had significantly worsened. It is sure enough, of course, that Harriet Taylor had a part in making the selection for Dissertations and Discussions, though she did not live to see its publication, and perhaps she was more strongly offended by Carlyle than Mill was. In any case, it seems a pity that Mill did not at least include parts of the review, as he did in other cases where the article in full appeared outdated or relatively insignificant.

Mill continued for a few years to use Carlyle as an authority in other essays, sometimes openly and sometimes quietly. In “Armand Carrel,” which was published in October 1837, the bearing of witness is at its height. In the first paragraph Mill uses a German phrase undoubtedly taken from Carlyle’s French Revolution; at 182-3 he uses an image found in a letter to him from Carlyle; at 187 the “formulas” attributed by Carlyle to Mirabeau appear again (cf. 161 where Mill cites the French Revolution); at 201, in the midst of a long quotation from a letter from himself to Carlyle, he puts in quotation marks “quiet emphasis,” a term Carlyle had applied in another letter to Mill’s tone in the review of Alison (Carlyle was not in 1837 identified here; see the discussion of textual variants at cxv); and at 215 a common remark of Carlyle’s is attributed to “one of the greatest writers of our time” (in 1837 he had been “one of the noblest spirits of our time”). Other places in the present volume also reveal traces of Edition: current; Page: [ci] their relations: in “Michelet” (1844), the final text at 227 praises Thierry for making “the age tell its own story; not drawing anything from invention, but adhering scrupulously to authentic facts”; as first published, the essay says that Thierry, in this laudable adherence, is “like Mr. Carlyle.” Similarly, in “Guizot’s Essays and Lectures on History” (1845) at 261 the comment that the “Oxford theologians” have “a theory of the world” originally included the comment, “as Mr. Carlyle would say.” By 1859, when the revised version appeared, Mill was happier to keep his prophetic authority veiled.

“Armand Carrel” is, according to the heading in the London and Westminster for October 1837, a review of “Armand Carrel, his Life and Character. From the French of D. Nisard. Preceded by a Biographical Sketch, abridged from the French of E. Littré.” Republished in Dissertations and Discussions, it reveals in its history and content a very strong personal as well as political attachment to the subject. Mill followed Carrel’s career from the time of the Revolution of 1830, especially in relation to the French government’s continued limitation of press freedom. They met in Paris in 1833 (the encounter is outlined in the letter from Mill to Carlyle quoted in the article at 201-2) and perhaps again in London in 1834 and/or 1836; Mill made much of Carrel’s speech in the Cour des Pairs in defence of the National in December 1834; he tried repeatedly to get contributions from Carrel for the London and Westminster, believing that his signature alone would benefit the review, and made sure Carrel got the issues as they appeared.21 Carrel epitomized for Mill the best features of the young men of the mouvement, and provided an ideal, even if an unrealized one, for Mill’s own activities as a radical publicist and reformer in the 1830s.

Given the strength of Mill’s feeling, it is somewhat surprising that he seems not to have begun his article until a year after Carrel’s death, at which time, recalling their first meeting, he wrote to Carlyle (8 August, 1837) to ask for the return of his descriptive letter.22 By 29 August he had finished the article, or at least was confident that it would be ready for the October number, and a month later, while on a holiday tour, he wrote to his sub-editor, John Robertson, revealing the special significance Carrel had for him: “We want now to give a character to the Review, as Carrel gave one to the National. . . . I dare not violate my instinct of suitableness, which we must the more strive to keep up the more we are exposed to swerve from it by our attempts to make the Review acceptable to the public.”23 At least part of what he meant is indicated in the article, when he says: “The English idea of a newspaper, as a sort of impersonal thing, coming from nobody knows where, the readers never thinking of the writer, nor caring whether he thinks what he writes, as long as they think what he Edition: current; Page: [cii] writes;—this would not have done for Carrel, nor been consistent with his objects” (197).

Rather slight changes in the article as republished call attention to otherwise hidden peculiarities. In Dissertations and Discussions the title reads “Armand Carrell. Biographical Notices by MM. Nisard and Littré,” while the title in 1837, “Armand Carrel, his Life and Character,” clearly implies that a single work is under review. Also the first words of the original version, “This little work is” are modified in the version of 1859 to “These little works are”; and further on “one distinguished writer” is replaced by “two distinguished writers.” In fact no copy has been found of the separate publication (a pamphlet, one would judge) that was apparently under review in 1837, and it appears likely that it never was published. Désiré Nisard’s article on Carrel, which is clearly the source of Mill’s translations and references, appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes in October 1837, and (given the frequent friendly correspondence between him and Mill about the London and Westminster, to which Nisard contributed) a prepublication copy was probably sent to Mill. Emile Littré’s account of Carrel seems not to have appeared in print until it was published in 1854 as an introductory “notice biographique” to Charles Romey’s edition of Carrel’s Oeuvres littéraires et économiques, well after the first appearance of Mill’s article, but before its republication; again Mill’s quotations and references clearly come from this notice, although seventeen years intervene between Mill’s citations from it and its independent publication. Odd as the sequence of events may seem, one may infer that Mill, who was acquainted with Littré, was given the text for translation, it being assumed that it would also appear in French at about the same time.24 Finally, Hooper, named in 1837 as the publisher of the “not yet published” work, was at that time the publisher of the London and Westminster. What seems most likely is that Mill proposed to Hooper a pamphlet consisting of Nisard’s and Littré’s essays, translated (and likely paid for) by himself; he then reviewed a work (his translation, perhaps unfinished) that existed in manuscript, but was never published.

If this interpretation is correct, it strengthens the already powerful evidence of Mill’s extraordinary attachment to Carrel’s character and career, an attachment, as is demonstrated by John Cairns in the Introduction above (lxii-lxvii), that was not short-lived. For example, he wrote to Henry Chapman immediately after the French Revolution of February 1848: “In my meditations and feelings on the whole matter, every second thought has been of Carrel—he who perhaps alone in Europe was qualified to direct such a movement, to have perished uselessly, and the very man who killed him, now a prominent reformer. . . .” And, sending a set of Dissertations and Discussions to Charles Dupont-White mainly because Edition: current; Page: [ciii] he had been a friend of Carrel, he comments: “Je me réjouirai toujours de l’avoir, moi aussi, personnellement connu, et je conserve de lui un souvenir des plus vifs.”25

ESSAYS IN THE EDINBURGH REVIEW

mill’s intense political involvement of the 1830s having ended in disillusionment, at least so far as his personal ambitions as editor or actor were concerned, he decided to divest himself of the London and Westminster and, though as author mainly concerned in the last stages of composition of his Logic, to offer his services as essayist and reviewer to the Edinburgh. This connection began with his second review of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, but even before that article was written he outlined his further hopes to Macvey Napier, editor of the Edinburgh, in a letter partly quoted in the Introduction above:

. . . I should like very much . . . to write occasionally on modern French history & historical literature, with which from peculiar causes I am more extensively acquainted than Englishmen usually are. If I had continued to carry on the London & W. review, I should have written more than one article on Michelet a writer of great & original views, very little known among us. One article on his history of France, & another combining his Roman history with Arnold’s, might I think be made very interesting & useful. Even on Guizot there may be something still to be written.26

Nothing came of this notion for some time, though in 1842 Mill did much reading on Roman history, consulting the German authorities as well as Michelet and Arnold.27 Eventually his attention moved from Rome back to France, and in a letter to Alexander Bain (of which unfortunately only part is known) he says: “I am now vigorously at work reviewing Michelet’s History of France for the Edinburgh. I hope to do Napier, and get him to insert it before he finds out what a fatal thing he is doing.”28 The reference here is to what he had earlier described to Napier as his “strongly Guelphic” views, and later identified to R.B. Fox as Edition: current; Page: [civ] his “arrant Hildebrandism,” that is, his favouring the popes over the kings,29 a matter that emerges in a letter to Michelet while the article was in progress, as well, of course, as in the text itself. Reporting to Bain that the essay was in Napier’s hands by 3 November, 1843, Mill commented, “If he prints it, he will make some of his readers stare.” With the hindsight of a half-century, in some respects dulled but percipient in others, Bain remarks in his biography of Mill: “We have a difficulty, reading it now, to see anything very dreadful in its views. But a philosophic vindication of the Papacy and the celibacy of the clergy, as essential preservatives against barbarism, was not then familiar to the English mind.”30

The essay, being cogitated and written during the final stages of Mill’s work on his System of Logic, shows many signs of his matured views on the lessons and methods of history, for instance on the three stages of historical writing and the formation of national character (“Ethology,” as he called the new science in his Logic). It also introduces a theme more dominant later in his writings, the historical record of women’s outstanding contributions to political and social life, and furthermore suggests the instructive role he now saw as more appropriately his than the active one he strove for in the 1830s.

The second notion canvassed by Mill when he wrote to Napier about contributing an historical series to the Edinburgh was further comment on Guizot. This came to fruition in “Guizot’s Essays and Lectures on History” (1845), a much more comprehensive essay than the jointly written “Guizot’s Lectures on European Civilization” in the London Review nine years earlier. Like “Michelet’s History of France,” it was republished in Dissertations and Discussions in 1859, where they together make a major contribution to the effect of that collection.

Mill was moving into a new period of activity when this essay was composed, though the themes of the Logic were still running through his mind, as one can see especially in the article’s discussions of such issues as scientific history as an interpretative tool, the relations between successive states of society, and the constructive, indeed essential, role of antagonism in cultural, intellectual, and social progress. This last theme is of course predictive of Mill’s future work as well, being central to On Liberty and important in other of his essays; his comment on the “stationary state” in “Guizot” also suggests the development of this idea in his Principles; and again there is mention of the role of women in history, one of the principal emphases in his Subjection of Women. When beginning work on “Guizot,” Mill was also seeing through the press the first edition of his Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy (1844), Edition: current; Page: [cv] the questions having remained unsettled since he wrote the essays in the early thirties (and to this day not entirely resolved). He was already planning to develop his ideas on political economy into a treatise,31 and he published “The Currency Question” in the Westminster in June 1844 and “The Claims of Labour” (on which he was working in this period) in the Edinburgh in April 1845.

Unlike these two articles, Mill’s accounts of the French historians were not occasional, not even in the sense of being responses to recent publications. He therefore was not specially anxious to rush his thoughts into print. So, though Napier was evidently pressing him early in 1844, he indicated that he would not have “Guizot” ready for the spring number, even if there were room for it; and, though he told John Sterling in May that he had been writing it, he remarked to Napier in November that “Guizot of course can wait indefinitely.”32 And wait it did, until after the appearance of the number containing “The Claims of Labour” and the next number in July. When it was published in October it was well received, Francis Jeffrey commenting.

Guizot, on the whole, I think excellent, and, indeed, a very remarkable paper. There are passages worthy of Macaulay, and throughout the traces of a vigorous and discursive intellect. He idolises his author a little too much (though I am among his warmest admirers) and I think under-estimates the knowledge and the relish of him which is now in this country. I cordially agree with most of the doctrine, and the value that is put on it, though I am far from being satisfied with the account of the Feudal system, and the differences between it and clanship, and the patriarchal, or Indian or North American tribes and associations, with which the affinities are curious.

These remarks were made before Jeffrey knew the author’s identity; when informed, Jeffrey said: “Your key to the articles has, in some instances, surprised me, as to Neaves especially, and as to Mill also: for though I have long thought highly of his powers as a reasoner, I scarcely gave him credit for such large and sound views of realities and practical results as are displayed in that article.”33 One of the reasons for such approval may be the article’s echo, noted by Napier, of ideas advanced by the eighteenth-century. Scottish school, including Gilbert Stuart and Millar. In any case, the success of the account was understandably pleasing to Mill, who received (without asking for them) reprints, and rather surprisingly agreed that Napier’s excision of the conclusion Edition: current; Page: [cvi] of his essay was warranted. Unfortunately, the manuscript (like those of almost all Mill’s review articles) has not survived, and so we lack the text of what would undoubtedly be the most interesting variant, for which we must rely on his statement to Napier:

The omission of the concluding paragraph I do not regret, it could be well spared, & though I am fully convinced of the truth of all it contained, I was not satisfied with the manner in which it was expressed. You are of course quite right in not printing what you think would expose you to attack, when you do not yourself agree in it. At the same time. I do not know how a public writer can be more usefully employed than in telling his countrymen their faults, & if that is considered anti-national I am not at all desirous to avoid the charge. Neither do I think that the English, with all their national self-conceit, are now much inclined to resent having their faults pointed out—they will bear a good deal in that respect.34

“Duveyrier’s Political Views of French Affairs,” which appeared in the Edinburgh in April 1846, is similarly non-occasional; indeed Mill began writing it in the spring of 1844, thinking it might find a place in the British and Foreign Review, then edited by John Mitchell Kemble.35 On 6 June, disappointed in his hopes that it would be finished (part was completed and the rest in draft), he wrote to Kemble promising that, official work and a holiday intervening, he would finish it in time for the August number; again on 14 August he asked for a stay, being “loaded with occupation.”36 The next surviving evidence leaves us in darkness as to the intermediate history: a letter to Napier on 1 May, 1846, acknowledges a generous remittance for the article, and then refers to what is, for us, yet another not-to-be-retrieved variant:

I cannot complain of your having left out the passage controverting the warlike propensity of the French, though I should have been glad if it had been consistent with your judgment to have retained it. The opinion is a very old & firm one with me, founded on a good deal of personal observation & I do not think you will find that Englishmen or other foreigners who have lived long in France & mixed in French society, are, so generally as you seem to think, of a different opinion. I have certainly heard, from such persons, the same opinion which I have expressed, & quite as strongly. And I am sure you will admit that national importance, & consideration among other nations, may be very strongly desired & sought by people who would rather have it in any other way than by war. I venture to say thus much because I think the Edin, has lately been sometimes very unjust to the French. . . .37

Here Mill shows less indulgence for a fellow editor’s need to maintain a steady colouration in a journal, perhaps because his own editorship was a further two years in the past, but more likely because the subject was of greater contemporary importance, the essay on Duveyrier being much more concerned with Edition: current; Page: [cvii] current issues than that on Guizot. Mill does not ignore history, but the history that matters is mainly that since 1830, when France embarked on a constitutional course with, as it were, no native roots. The July monarchy was, of course, apparently continuing at the height of its success, with no portents of its downfall in less than two years. Mill was able here to draw on his extensive knowledge of the development of the French constitution in theory and practice during the preceding decade and a half, as well as his acquaintance with Duveyrier and his writings, and draw conclusions about the immediate problems and eventual solutions. His essay indeed typifies those of his writings (see especially the essays in Volume VI of the Collected Works) where one finds assessments that combine urgency with measured comment, one of the best of his remarks here being, “It is not the uncontrolled ascendancy of popular power, but of any power, which is formidable” (306).

In recognition, perhaps, of the dual nature of the essay, Mill did not include it in Dissertations and Discussions, but extracted the more generalized part for insertion in the revised version of “Tocqueville on Democracy in America [II]” there reprinted.38 Only this passage then provides variants.

THE WESTMINSTER AGAIN

the french revolution of 1848, with its concomitant upheavals elsewhere in Europe, once again fired Mill’s imagination, the idealist heat being heightened by Harriet Taylor’s enthusiasm. Though the socialist experiment was short-lived, its lessons, he believed, were of lasting value, as he indicates in the Autobiography when discussing the changes made in the Principles of Political Economy for the 2nd (1849) and 3rd (1852) editions. The increased value attached to socialism (in his use of the term) was the result, he says, partly of “the change of times, the first edition [1848] having been written and sent to press before the French Revolution of 1848, after which the public mind became more open to the reception of novelties in opinion, and doctrines appeared moderate which would have been thought very startling a short time before.” In the next year or two, he adds, he and his wife (as she became in 1851) gave much time “to the study of the best Socialistic writers on the Continent, and to meditation and discussion on the whole range of topics involved in the controversy. . . .”39

The reason for these changes may not have been so evident to contemporary readers of the Principles, but Mill had responded earlier, if at first anonymously, to the Revolution, choosing for his vehicle the Westminster, which was more Edition: current; Page: [cviii] open to radical views than the Edinburgh. In “Vindication of the French Revolution of February 1848,” published in April 1849, he takes as opponent the ever-available judgments of Lord Brougham (one of the originators and early mainstays of the Edinburgh). Though in this respect occasional, the article had lasting value for Mill as a defence of principles valid for the foreseeable future, and Brougham’s pamphlet, Letter to the Marquess of Lansdowne, though viciously assailed, merely served as the best available entrée to the subject, which again brought back excited memories. The remark quoted above showing Mill’s regret that Carrel was not living at that hour is echoed emphatically in Bain’s recollection of their conversations at the time. The “Vindication,” Bain says, “like [Mill’s] ‘Armand Carrel,’ is a piece of French political history, and the replies to Brougham are scathing. I remember well, in his excitement at the Revolution, his saying that the one thought that haunted him was—Oh, that Carrel were still alive!”40 As a glance at the article will show, Mill here engages major constitutional and practical questions in defending the revolutionists, and, in elucidating principles of comparative politics, brings to bear his careful consideration of the development of French institutions.

The essay takes forensic form, and Mill’s concern over the basis of his defence is seen in his decisions about the authenticating evidence. This concern appears strongly in a letter to Hickson probably written in March of 1849:

I attach importance to most of the notes, since when I am charging Brougham with misrepresentation of what Lamartine said, it will not do to bid the reader trust to my translations—and the passages from Tocqueville being cited as evidence to matters of fact, ought to be given in the original. You however must judge what is best for your review. You kindly offered me some separate copies—I should not desire more than 50, but in these I would like to have the notes preserved and it would not be necessary for that purpose to set them up in smaller type. If the types are redistributed I would willingly pay the expense of recomposing. I cannot imagine how the printer could commit the stupid blunder of putting those notes with the text. As a heading, “The Revolution of February and its assailants” would do. In the separate copies I should like to have a title page, which might run thus: “A Vindication of the French Revolution of 1848 in reply to Lord Brougham and others.”41

These “notes,” which consist of the original passages that Mill translated, do not Edition: current; Page: [cix] appear in the article, but they are attached as an appendix to the pamphlet offprint, and appear in Dissertations and Discussions as an appendix to Volume II; here, acknowledging Mill’s attachment to them, we include them as Appendix B.

Other indications of the significance of the argument to Mill are seen in his procuring and disposing of offprints (he referred to the article even before publication as a “pamphlet”), and in his reprinting it in Dissertations and Discussions, long after what Bain calls his “sanguine belief in the political future of France” had disappeared following the “fatality of December, 1851,” when Louis Napoleon engineered his coup d’état.42

The initial composition is not well documented, although there is no doubt that he and Harriet were highly offended by the British press’s revealing through its animosity its ignorance of France. The first extant reference to the article dates from 6 February, 1849, when Mill reported to Hickson that it was finished, except for the revision, which was retarded by difficulties he was having with his eyesight. He will, he says (making a rare and welcome reference to reading Dickens), “ ‘make an effort’ (vide chap. 1 of Dombey) and let you have it soon” for the Westminster. And less than two weeks later he writes to Harriet: “The pamphlet [sic] has gone to Hickson—I had thought of sending one of the separate copies to L. Blanc. Whom else should it go to? To all the members of the Prov[isional] Gov[ernment] I think, & as it will not be published till April I had better take the copies to Paris with me & send them when there as it saves so much uncertainty & delay.”43

He returned to the matter of the titles in reporting on 14 March to Harriet Taylor on the article’s progress:

I have had the proof of the pamphlet, all but the last few pages. There seems very little remaining in it that could be further softened without taking the sting out entirely—which would be a pity. I am rather against giving away any copies, at least for the present, in England—except to Louis Blanc to whom I suppose I should acknowledge authorship. . . . As a heading in the review I have thought of “The Revolution of February & its assailants”—it does not seem advisable to put Brougham’s name at the top of the page—& “the Revolution of February” or anything of that kind itself would be tame, & excite no attention.44

In sending a copy to Louis Blanc, Mill expressed strongly his approbation of the revolutionists’ behaviour:

As indicated in the editorial headnote to the text, Mill’s wishes concerning the titles were acceded to; however, some of the remaining “sting” that he thought could not be spared was extracted in the reprint in Dissertations and Discussions, ten years after the letter to his wife quoted above. Indeed, it seems certain that this was one of the two articles (the other probably being “Sedgwick’s Discourse”) in which he felt the need to remove some of the “asperity of tone” of the original version.47 The number of “softening” variants helps make this (given its date) one of the most heavily revised essays in Dissertations and Discussions.

The accession to imperial power of Louis Napoleon provides much of the explanation of Mill’s not writing at length or publicly on France during the remainder of his life. He felt not only abstract revulsion but personal distress during the Second Empire, as his letters show, but no major essays dwell on his concern. Furthermore, his extended comments in essays on history and historians after 1850 are exclusively devoted to the classical period, where his interest in philosophy was intertwined with historical considerations. But his extensive and intensive examinations of the themes developed in this volume, valuable in themselves, may also be seen behind his major political and social writings of the 1850s and 1860s.

TEXTUAL VARIANTS

the great majority of textual variants in Mill’s periodical essays derive from their revision for the first two volumes of Dissertations and Discussions (1859), which contain articles from 1832 to 1853; alterations in the second edition of Edition: current; Page: [cxi] those volumes (1867) were infrequent. The articles, dating from 1859 to 1866, that were republished in the third volume of Dissertations and Discussions (also 1867), were less thoroughly revised (or, perhaps it is fairer to say, needed less revision). The fourth and final volume (1875), containing materials dating from 1869 to 1873, was prepared for publication after Mill’s death by his step-daughter, Helen Taylor; there is no evidence that Mill was responsible for any of the rare changes in it (and in the third edition of Volumes I and II, and the second edition of Volume III, which were published with it in 1875). There is, indeed, a gradual decrease in frequency of changes, substantive and formal, both as the years progress and as the gap between the time of first publication and of republication decreases.

These generalizations, which derive from a study of all the revisions, are borne out by the essays in this volume, six of which appeared in Dissertations and Discussions, two in part and four in full, all in Volumes I and II. Because he chose not to include in Dissertations and Discussions any of his apprentice essays, the first three essays in this volume were not rewritten; neither, as mentioned above, was the review of Carlyle’s French Revolution. “The Monster Trial” was not reprinted, undoubtedly because Mill thought it too occasional for long wear, but it reveals variants of some interest in Mill’s self-quotation of a passage from an article in the Examiner. The results of collation of the texts that Mill could have prepared will be seen in footnotes, which record the substantive variants in accordance with the system outlined on cxiv-cxvi below.

While a full appreciation of the significance of Mill’s changes can be gained only by examining each in context, an impracticable goal here, some indications of their general tenor are appropriate. A rough initial classification (used also in the other volumes of this edition) will help in describing the kind and frequency of his revisions: one can distinguish (though there is overlapping) among changes that reveal (1) alterations in opinion or fact, including omissions, amplifications, or corrections; (2) alterations resulting from the time between versions or from their different provenances; (3) alterations that qualify, emphasize, or give technical clarity; and (4) alterations that are purely verbal, or give semantic clarity, or result from shifts in word usage, and alterations in emphasis indicated by changes from italic to roman typeface.

In “The Monster Trial” there are only three substantive changes between the quoted passage as it appeared in the Examiner in 1834 and in the Monthly Repository in 1835 (see 126a, b-b, 128c). Of these, the second is a trivial example of the fourth type, but the other two, involving excision of passages having to do with a radical view of the rights of property, illustrate type 1 because they involve important differences in intention and effect. It will be noted, of course, that they could be classed as type 2 because the passages, appropriate in a newspaper, might be thought not to serve the different ends of a periodical, especially after the passage of a year and a half.

More illustrative, of course, are the changes in the six essays reprinted in Edition: current; Page: [cxii] whole or in part in Dissertations and Discussions. In all there are 488 substantive variants, of which 38 may be seen as type 1, 45 as type 2, 152 as type 3, and 253 as type 4. Of the total, only 37 reflect changes resulting from revision in the 1867 edition of Dissertations and Discussions, and almost all of these are type 4. In “Alison’s History” (a comparatively short essay, it will be recalled, only part of which was reprinted) there are 41 variants, of which over two-thirds are type 4; 15 of these (including the one variant from 1867) result from the removal of italics, a quieting revision found in the essays dating from the early 1830s that in their original forms show Carlyle’s influence on Mill’s prose. The one change that I have labelled as type 1 is that from “men’s” to “people’s” (119r-r), an acknowledgment by Mill of the pronominal gender distortion that he tried to alleviate in his writings after the early 1850s.48 As an illustration of type 2 changes, one may cite 120x-x, in which the “Tories” of 1832 became “Conservatives” in 1859, reflecting the change in terminology (not, of course, that the earlier term disappeared). A type 3 change, typical not only of its kind but also of Mill’s ceaseless search for precise categorization, is seen at 120a-a, where “never” was replaced by “has scarcely ever”.

General illustrations of the types of alteration may be seen in the most heavily and most interestingly revised essay, “Armand Carrel,” which contains 246 changes, more than half of those in this volume as a whole, 23 of them being type 1 and 31 type 2. Of the former, good instances will be found at 173j-j, k(the motivation here a little mysterious), 177e-e, and g(cf. the footnote where the fact is corrected). At 185j-j one sees the common qualification of Mill’s early enthusiasm for August Comte—but compare 228s-s. At 185k-k there is a reflection of Mill’s further reading in the philosophy of history as Vico and Condorcet are listed with Herder, while von Müller is dropped. The type 2 changes reflecting the passage of time are illustrated by 187t (cf. 187n), where Mill, having referred in 1837 to the hoped-for completion of Guizot’s Histoire de la révolution d’Angleterre (2 vols., 1826-27), deleted the promissory note, for the work had been completed by four further volumes, two in 1854 and two in 1856; the type 2 changes reflecting the change of provenance are illustrated close by, at 188v-v, where the revision includes deletion of the reference to “this review” (it also includes the type 4 change from “contemporaries” to “cotemporaries,” Mill’s common form). An interesting series of type 3 changes, close in effect to type 1, will be seen at 192n-n and following, where the proper ways of describing the effects of the Revolution of 1830 are explored. Such changes are related to those counted as type 4 that soften the elegiac tone at 169h, j-j, 173g, 199l-l, m-m, and 212e-e; these have a cumulative effect indicating that individually minor Edition: current; Page: [cxiii] changes can have an importance going beyond type 3 to type 1. It should be mentioned that only 8 of the variants in “Armand Carrel” date from 1867, but 24 arise from Mill’s quotations from one of his letters to Carlyle; these are of unequal significance, but certainly should not be ignored in any close study of Mill’s political views in the 1830s.49 Finally (though one is tempted to continue exhaustively and exhaustingly), material of interest to historians of the language can be found in those variant notes that show a change from italic to roman type for words taken into English from French; Mill was, one may infer, an important source of such loan words, his works providing in this, as in other respects, significant material for philologists.

In “Michelet’s History of France,” “Guizot’s Essays and Lectures,” and the small part of “Duveyrier’s Political Views” that was republished, the substantive changes bear out the generalizations made above about frequency and importance: “Michelet” reveals 63 variants, 7 of them dating from 1867; only 8 of the total show the characteristics of types 1 and 2 “Guizot” has 44, a surprising proportion (nearly a quarter) from 1867; all but 2 of the total are of types 3 and 4. And “Duveyrier” shows only 4, of which 1 is from 1867, and 3 are type 4. “Vindication of the French Revolution of February 1848” is an exception to the pattern; for reasons stated above, both its subject and its personal attack on Brougham gave matter for thought in the ten years intervening between its first publication and its republication in Dissertations and Discussions. In fact it contains 90 revisions (10 of them from 1867),50 of which 10 may be seen as type 1; once more it may be claimed that students of Mill, in this case especially those interested in the roots of his qualified socialism, should look carefully at these first and second thoughts.

The accidental variants (not reported in detail in this edition), mainly consisting of changes in punctuation and spelling, do not reveal sufficient evidence to justify major generalizations. They of course show, to an indeterminable extent, the preferences of printers, editors, and publishing houses. (The Edinburgh Review, for instance, may have revised Mill’s manuscripts by removing some hyphenations, judging by the comparative frequency of such changes when revisions in essays from it are compared with those from the Westminster.) As usual in Mill’s case, the essays show a slight lightening in punctuation in their republication, but “Armand Carrel” reveals in Dissertations and Discussions a great preponderance of added over removed commas. As elsewhere, the earlier “any thing” and “every thing [body]” are collapsed into one word, and participles with “s” (“realising,” “analysed”) tend to take “z” Edition: current; Page: [cxiv] forms, except for “recognize” and its cognates, where the reverse occurs; the forms of “shew” take the “o” spelling, and “enquiry” and its cognates take an initial “i”. The addition or removal of initial capital letters (roughly in balance) has not yielded any conclusions, nor are any of these changes suggestive of altered emphasis, as they are in other places, for example in some of the works in Volumes XVIII-XIX of the Collected Works.

TEXTUAL PRINCIPLES AND METHODS

as throughout this edition, the copy-text for each item is that of the final version supervised by Mill, unless only a part of an essay was later reprinted, in which case the latest full version is adopted.51 There are, it is to be regretted, no extant manuscripts for any of the essays here included. Details concerning revisions are given in the headnotes to each item and in the discussion above.

Method of indicating variants. All the substantive variants are governed by the principles enunciated below; “substantive” here means all changes of text except spelling (including initial capitalization), hyphenation, punctuation, demonstrable typographical errors, and such printing-house concerns as type size, etc. All substantive variants are indicated, except the substitution of “on” for “upon” (twenty-two instances) and of “though” for “although” (five instances). The variants are of three kinds: addition of a word or words, substitution of a word or words, deletion of a word or words. The following illustrative examples are drawn, except as indicated, from “Armand Carrel.”

Addition of a word or words: see 170n-n. In the text, the passage “or even who can” appears as “or nevenn who can”; the variant note reads “n-n+59,67”. Here the plus sign indicates the editions of this particular text in which the addition appears. The editions are always indicated by the last two numbers of the year of publication: here 59 = 1859 (the first edition of Volumes I and II of Dissertations and Discussions); 67 = 1867 (the second edition of those volumes). Information explaining the use of these abbreviations is given in each headnote, as required. Any added editorial comment is enclosed in square brackets and italicized.

Placing this example in context, the interpretation is that when first published (1837) the reading was “or who can”; this reading was altered in 1859 to “or even who can” and the latter reading was retained in 1867 (the copy-text).

Substitution of a word or words: see 169j-j. In the text the passage “We can still remember” appears as “jWe can stillj remember”; the variant note reads Edition: current; Page: [cxv] “j-j371,2 It is still given to us, to”. Here the words following the edition indicator are those for which “We can still” were substituted, applying the same rules and putting the variant in context, the interpretation is that when first published (in 1837 as article and offprint) the reading was “It is still given to us, to remember”; in 1859 this was altered to “We can still remember”; and the reading of 1859 (as is clear in the text) was retained in 1867.

In this volume there are few examples of passages altered more than once: see 201a-a. The text reads “aMr. Carlyle’sa words”; the variant note reads “a-a33 your] 371,2 the”. Here the different readings, in chronological order, are separated by a square bracket. The interpretation is that the reading in the earliest version (1833), “your words”, was altered in the second version (18371 and the identical 18372) to “the words”, and in the final versions (1859 and 1867, the copy-text) to “Mr. Carlyle’s words”. (The circumstances are unusual, for the version of 1833 is from a letter from Mill to Carlyle.) The other cases, all instances of a wording altered and then returned to its original reading, are signalled by the absence of an expected edition indicator. See, e.g., 206h, where the variant note reads “h59 or seemed to present”; the lack of the expected “67” indicates that the words “or seemed to present” were added in 1859 but deleted in 1867 in a return to the original reading.

Deletion of a word or words: see 169h and 118j-j. The first of these is typical, representing the most convenient way of indicating deletions in a later edition. In the text at 169h a single superscript appears centred between “gone” and “; and”; the variant note reads “h371,2. . . He is gone”. Here the words following the edition indicators are the ones deleted; applying the same rules and putting the variant in context, the interpretation is that when first published (1837) the reading was “gone. He is gone; and”; in 1859 the period and “He is gone” were deleted, and the reading of 1859 (as is clear in the text) was retained in 1867.

The second example (118j-j) illustrates the method used in the volume to cover more conveniently deletions when portions of the copy-text were later reprinted, as in the case of “Alison’s History of the French Revolution,” part of which was republished in Dissertations and Discussions, Volume I. That is, there is here, exceptionally, a later version of part of the copy-text, whereas normally the copy-text is the latest version. In the text the words “The hundred political revolutions” appear as “The jhundredj political revolutions”; the variant note reads “j-j-59,67”. The minus sign indicates that in the editions signified the word enclosed was deleted; putting the example in context the interpretation is that when first published (1832) the reading was (as is clear in the text) “The hundred political revolutions”; this reading was altered in 1859 to “The political revolutions”, and the latter reading was retained in 1867.

Dates of footnotes: see 187n. Here the practice, when a note was added by Mill to a version after the first, is to place immediately after the footnote indicator, in square brackets, the figures indicating the edition in which Mill’s Edition: current; Page: [cxvi] footnote first appeared. In the example cited, “[67]” signifies that the note was added in 1867. If no such indication appears, the note is in all versions.

Punctuation and spelling. In general, changes between versions in punctuation and spelling are ignored. Those changes that occur as part of a substantive variant are included in that variant, and the superscript letters in the text are placed exactly with reference to punctuation. Changes between italic and roman type are treated as substantive variants and are therefore shown, except in foreign phrases and titles of works.

Other textual liberties. Some of the titles have been modified or supplied; the full titles in their various forms will be found in the headnotes. The dates added to the titles are those of first publication. When footnotes to the titles gave bibliographic information, these have been deleted, and the information given in the headnotes. Having adapted our practices to composition by word-processor, we have not reproduced digraphs. At 204n-5n quotation marks have been added to what was clearly intended to be recognized as a quotation. In the headnotes the quotations from Mill’s bibliography, the manuscript of which is a scribal copy, are also silently corrected; the note below lists them.52 While the punctuation and spelling of each item are retained, the style has been made uniform: for example, periods are deleted after references to monarchs (e.g., “Louis XIV.”), and their numerical designations are regularized as capital roman numerals; dashes are deleted when combined with other punctuation before a quotation or reference; and italic punctuation after italic passages has been made roman. Indications of ellipsis have been normalized to three dots plus, when necessary, terminal punctuation. The positioning of footnote indicators has been normalized so that they always appear after adjacent punctuation marks; in some cases references have been moved from the beginning to the end of quotations for consistency.

Also, in accordance with modern practice, all long quotations have been reduced in type size and the quotation marks removed. In consequence, it has occasionally been necessary to add square brackets around Mill’s words in quotations; there is little opportunity for confusion, as there are no editorial insertions except page references. Double quotation marks replace single, and titles of works originally published separately are given in italics. Mill’s references to sources, and additional editorial references (in square brackets), Edition: current; Page: [cxvii] have been normalized. When necessary his references have been corrected; a list of the corrections and alterations is given in the note below.53

Appendices. Appendix A, the review of Guizot’s Lectures, is placed here because it was jointly written by Joseph Blanco White and Mill, and the precise contribution of each is not known; otherwise it is treated uniformly with the main text.

Appendix B contains the French texts of the material quoted in Mill’s own translation in “Vindication of the French Revolution of February 1848.” The importance Mill attached to their being available is explained at cviii-cix above.

Edition: current; Page: [cxviii]

Appendix C consists of the textual emendations; its headnote outlines the principles and practices adopted in altering Mill’s text.

Appendix D, the Index of Persons and Works Cited, provides a guide to Mill’s references and quotations, with notes concerning the separate entries, and a list of substantive variants between his quotations and their sources. The most extensive quotation is, as one would expect, from reviewed works; a large number of the shorter quotations (some of which are indirect) are undoubtedly taken from memory, with no explicit references being given, and the identification of some of these is inescapably inferential. It will be noted that Mill habitually translates from the French; this volume gives the best evidence of his very considerable skill.

Since Appendix D serves as an index to persons, writings, and statutes, references to them do not appear in the general Index, which has been prepared by Dr. Maureen Clarke and Dr. Jean O’Grady.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

to the members of the editorial committee, to the editorial and printing staff of the University of Toronto Press, and especially to the copy-editors, Edition: current; Page: [cxix] Rosemary Shipton and Margaret Parker, I express my deep appreciation and thanks. I am greatly indebted to the staffs of various libraries, including the British Library, the University of Toronto Library, the Victoria University Library, the University of London Library, the library of the Institute of Historical Research, the British Library of Political and Economic Science, the London Library, and (a repeated but still special thanks for prompt and ever-courteous aid) the library of Somerville College, Oxford. Help of various kinds but always selfless came from these inadequately acknowledged scholars and friends: R.C. Alston, T.D. Barnes, Kathleen Coburn, M.J. Crump, J.L. Dewan, J. and M.L. Friedland, Gregory Hutchinson, André Jardin, Jay Macpherson, J. O’Donnell, David H. Pinkney, Aubrey Rosenberg, H.G. Schogt, C.A. Silber, and William Thomas.

A generous grant in support of editing and publication from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada places us yet again in grateful debt. Its major benefit to me is the rewarding company of the editorial team who have done all the hard work: more easily in writing than speech I thank Marion Filipiuk (our resident expert in French), Jean O’Grady, Rea Wilmshurst, Allison Taylor, Jonathan Cutmore, and Maureen Clarke. Her Huguenot heritage and historical profession make as appropriate as it is pleasant to announce again my enduring obligation to one member of the editorial committee, Ann P. Robson, ma femme qui, en dépit du dicton de François ler, ne varie point.

Mignet’s French Revolution

this is a very sprightly narrative of the French Revolution, in two small volumes: which is as much as to say, that it is calculated to be most extensively popular. It possesses, indeed, all the requisites for a popular history. It tells an interesting story; it tells it in an interesting manner; it is not too long to be readable; it addresses itself to the reigning sentiment in the nation for which it is written, and there is just philosophy enough in it to persuade common readers that they are deriving instruction, while there is not enough to task their attention or their patience. There is a sort of middle point which it is difficult to hit exactly, between a philosophical history and a mere narrative. M. Mignet seems to have aimed at this point; he has at any rate attained it.

The old mode of writing a history resembled the mode of writing a novel; with only this difference, that the facts were expected to be true. In both cases there was a story to be told, and he who told it best was the best novelist, or the best historian. The poems which preceded the first histories, and which were probably intended, with some qualifications, to pass for histories, were written with the same ends in view as the prose histories which followed them. Greater license of amplification was, indeed, allowed to the poet, but in other respects the standard of excellence was the same: he who raised the most vivid conceptions, and the most intense emotions, was the greatest master of his art. This mode of writing history attained its highest excellence in the hands of the Greek and Roman historians. Livy, perhaps, exemplifies it in its purest state. In what remains of his history we have a surprising instance of the perfection to which the art of narration may be carried, where no other part of the duties of a historian is attended to; and for that very reason. Thucydides, with the exception of his early chapters,[*] which consist chiefly of a comment upon evidence, may be regarded as another variety of the same class. Each stands preeminent among his countrymen in the talent of narrative, each avoids generalization, and when he has any reflections to make, puts them into the mouth of one of the dramatis personae; retaining the character of the story-teller, even when he puts on that of the orator or the politician.

Between this style of historical composition, and the more modern one, which makes history subservient to philosophy, in which the narrative itself is but a Edition: current; Page: [4] secondary object, the illustration of the laws of human nature and human society being the first, there is an intermediate style, which endeavours to unite the characteristic properties of both the others. In this the primary object is still the gratification of that large class, who read only for amusement. With this purpose long inductions of facts or trains of reasoning being inconsistent, they are accordingly avoided, or banished to an appendix. Dramatic interest is with these, as with the first class of historians, the main object; but such general reflections are interspersed, drawn from the surface of the subject, as may be comprehended without any effort of attention, by an ordinary understanding. The common reader is thus provided with such instruction, or supposed instruction, as his habits of mind render him capable of receiving, and is possessed with a high idea of the powers of the writer, who can communicate wisdom in so easy and entertaining a form. Of the popularity which may be acquired by this mode of writing history, the success of Hume is a striking example.[*] Excelling all modern historians in his powers of narrative, he has also obtained credit for the profundity of his reflections. That his reputation for this quality is so widely diffused, is of itself a sufficient proof that it is undeserved. Had his reflections been really profound, we may venture to affirm that they would have been less popular. By a profound reflection, is meant a reflection, the truth of which is not obvious at first sight, and to a cursory reader, but which, in proportion as a man grows wiser, and takes a deeper insight into things, forces itself upon his assent.

When we say, that M. Mignet seems to have formed himself in this school, and that he is the highest specimen of it, among recent writers, which our recollection suggests to us, we have conveyed, we think, a tolerably accurate conception of his character as a historian. Little, therefore, remains to be done beyond the selection of such passages as seem best adapted to exhibit the degree in which he possesses the various attributes of his class: for we do not purpose to enter at present into the general question of the French revolution; it being our intention, at no distant period, to treat of that subject at greater length.[†] In the main, our view of the subject accords with that of M. Mignet; and for this reason, among others, we are anxious that his work should be extensively circulated in this country. There is nothing more disgraceful to Englishmen than their utter ignorance, not only of the causes and effects, but of the very events, the story, of the French revolution. With the majority of them, even of those among them who read and think, the conception they have of that great event is all comprehended in a dim but horrible vision of mobs, and massacres, and revolutionary tribunals, and guillotines, and fishwomen, and heads carried on pikes, and noyades, and fusillades, and one Edition: current; Page: [5] Robespierre, a most sanguinary monster. What the Tory prints choose to tell them of this most interesting period of modern history, so much they know, and nothing more: that is, enough to raise in their minds an intense yet indefinite horror of French reforms and reformers, and as far as possible of all reforms and reformers. Now, however, when they have ceased to tremble for themselves, and to start from their sleep at the terrific idea of a landing of French Jacobins or a rising of English ones to confiscate their property and cut their throats, they can, perhaps, bear to look at the subject without horror; and we exhort them to buy and read M. Mignet’s work, that they may know in what light the revolution is regarded by the nation which saw and felt it, which endured its evils, and is now enjoying its benefits.

M. Mignet, in his two volumes, had not space to do more than relate the story of the revolution. Proofs, in seven hundred pages, he could give none; his work is not even attended by the pièces justificatives, which usually follow in the train of a French history. The revolution has been long une cause jugée, in the minds of all disinterested persons in France; and none of M. Mignet’s countrymen would have asked him for his proofs, who would have been capable of being convinced by them if offered. To an English reader, this omission will diminish in some degree the value of the book. A writer who opposes the current opinion, has need of all the proofs he can muster. Happily, the proofs are not scanty, and are, even in this country, accessible.[*] We purpose to lay some of them before our readers ere long.

M. Mignet’s narrative powers are of a high order. He has mastered the grand difficulty in narration; he is interesting, without being voluminous; concise, without being vague and general Former writers on the French revolution had either lost themselves in a sea of details, dwelling on circumstance after circumstance with such painful minuteness that he who had patience to read to the end of the story had time before he arrived there to forget the beginning; or had contented themselves with a meagre abstract, describing the most remarkable scenes in terms so general as to have fitted a hundred other scenes almost as well. In narrative, as in description, it is impossible to excite vivid conceptions, in other words it is impossible to be interesting, without entering somewhat into detail. A particular event cannot be characterized by a general description. But details are endless. Here then is the dilemma. All the details it is not possible to give, not only because nobody would read them, but because if read they would defeat their own purpose. If the reader’s conception wants vivacity where there are no details, where there is excess of details it wants distinctness. The multitude of the parts injures the ensemble. The difficulty is in the apt selection of details. It is in judging which of the individualizing features it is best to delineate, when there is not room for all: it is in fixing upon those features which are the most strikingly Edition: current; Page: [6] characteristic, or which, if delineated, will of themselves suggest the remainder, that the rarest quality, perhaps, of the skilful narrator displays itself. M. Mignet possesses this quality in an extraordinary degree. His narrative may be pronounced a model of the apt selection of details. No one has better allied circumstantiality with condensation. We have all heard of graphic descriptions. M. Mignet’s is a graphic narrative: and whoever looks even at the outside of the voluminous compilations which are called Histories of the Revolution, and then turns to M. Mignet’s small volumes, will wonder by what art he can abridge so much, with so little of the appearance of an abridgement.

We quote the following sketch of the state of affairs at the opening of the Etats Généraux, partly for the complete justification which it affords of the early revolutionists, and partly as a specimen of the manner in which M. Mignet has executed one of the most important parts of his task:

The government ought to have been better aware of the importance of the States-general. The re-establishment of that assembly announced of itself a great revolution. Looked forward to by the nation with eager hope, they reappeared at a moment when the ancient monarchy was in a state of decrepitude, and when they alone were capable of reforming the state, and supplying the necessities of the king. The difficulties of the times, the nature of their commission, the choice of their members, every thing announced that they were convoked no longer as the payers of taxes, but as the makers of laws. The public voice and the instructions of their constituents had confided to them the right of regenerating France; and public support, and the enormity of existing abuses, promised them strength to undertake and accomplish this great task.

It was the interest of the monarch to associate himself in their undertaking. By this means he might have re-established his power, and protected himself against the revolution, by being himself the author of it. Had he taken the lead in reforms, settled with firmness but with justice the new order of things; had he realized the wishes of the nation by defining the rights of the citizen, the functions of the States-general and the bounds of the royal authority; had he sacrificed his own arbitrary power, the superiority of the nobles, and the privileges of the corporate bodies; had he, in short, executed all the reforms which were called for by the public voice, and subsequently effected by the Constituent Assembly; he would have prevented the fatal dissensions which afterwards broke out. It is rarely that a prince consents to the diminution of his power, and has the wisdom to concede what he will ultimately be forced to sacrifice. Yet Louis XVI would have done so, if instead of being ruled by those around him, he had obeyed the impulses of his own mind. But utter anarchy prevailed in the royal councils. At the meeting of the States-general, no measures had been adopted, nothing previously settled, to prevent future disputes. Louis wavered irresolute, between his ministry, directed by Necker, and his court, governed by the queen and several princes of his family.

The minister, satisfied with having carried the double representation of the commons, dreaded the king’s indecision and the discontent of the court. Insufficiently alive to the magnitude of a crisis which he regarded as financial rather than political, instead of anticipating he waited for the result, and flattered himself that he could guide the course of events which he had done nothing to prepare. He felt that the ancient organization of the states could no longer be maintained, and that the existence of three estates, with each a veto on the other two, was a hindrance to the accomplishment of reforms and to the conduct of administration. He hoped, after the effects of this threefold opposition should be proved by Edition: current; Page: [7] experience, to reduce the number of the orders, and obtain the adoption of the British form of government, including the nobles and clergy in one chamber, and the commons in another. He did not perceive that when once the struggle had begun, his interference would be vain, and half-measures be satisfactory to nobody, that the weaker party from obstinacy, and the stronger from the force of circumstances, would refuse their assent to this system of conciliation. A compromise can only be satisfactory, while the victory is undecided.

The court, far from wishing to give regularity to the States-general, desired to annul them. It preferred the occasional resistance of the great public corporations to a division of authority with a permanent assembly. The separation of the orders favoured its designs: by fomenting their disunion, it sought to prevent them from acting. From the vice of their organization, former States-general had effected nothing, and it the more confidently anticipated a similar result now, as the first two estates seemed less than ever inclined to acquiesce in the reforms demanded by the third. The clergy desired to retain their wealth and privileges, and foresaw that they would have more sacrifices to make than advantages to gain. The nobles were conscious that even in resuming their long-lost political independence, they would have more to concede to the people on the one hand, than to obtain from the monarch on the other. The approaching revolution was about to take place almost exclusively in favour of the commons, and the first two estates were led to coalesce with the court against the commons, as they had previously coalesced with the commons against the court. Interest was the sole motive of this change of side; and they allied themselves to the monarch with no attachment to him, as they had defended the people with no view to the public good.

No means were spared to keep the nobles and clergy in this disposition. Courtship and seducements were lavished upon their leaders. A committee, partly composed of the most illustrious personages, was held at the house of the Comtesse de Polignac, and the principal members of the two orders were admitted to it. It was there that two of the most ardent defenders of liberty in the parliament, and before the convocation of the States-general, d’Epréménil and d’Entragues, were won over, and became its most inveterate enemies. There were regulated the costumes of the three orders,[*] and etiquette first, intrigue next, and lastly force, were applied to disunite them. The court was led away by the recollection of the old States-general: and imagined it possible to manage the present like the past; to keep down Paris by the army, and the deputies of the commons by those of the nobles; to control the States, by disuniting the orders, and to disunite the orders by reviving the old usages which elevated the nobility and humiliated the commons. It was thus that after the first sitting of the assembly, they imagined that they had prevented every thing by conceding nothing.*

Of the rapidity and dramatic interest of his narrative, the following passage is an example. He has just been relating the early acts of the Constituent Assembly.

The attempt to prevent the formation of the assembly having failed, nothing remained to the court but to become a party to its proceedings, in order to get the direction of them into its own hands. By prudence and good faith it might yet have repaired its errors and effaced the memory of its hostilities. There are times when we can originate sacrifices; there are others when we can do no more than take the merit of accepting them. At the opening of the States-general the monarch might have made the constitution. It was now only time to receive it from the assembly; if he had accommodated himself to this situation, his situation Edition: current; Page: [8] would infallibly have been improved. But the counsellors of Louis, recovered from the first emotion of surprise at their defeat, resolved to have recourse to the bayonet, having had recourse to authority in vain. They intimated to him that the contempt of his commands, the safety of his throne, the maintenance of the laws of the kingdom, and even the happiness of his people, demanded that he should recal the assembly to submission; that the assembly, sitting at Versailles, in the immediate neighbourhood of Paris, and supported by both places, required to be subdued by force; that it must either be removed or dissolved; that this design required immediate execution, to arrest the progress of the assembly, and that to carry it into effect it was necessary to call in the troops without delay, to intimidate the assembly, and keep down Paris and Versailles.

While these schemes were in preparation, the deputies of the nation were commencing their legislatorial labours, and preparing that constitution so impatiently waited for, and which they thought it no longer fitting to delay. Addresses poured in from Paris and the great towns, applauding their wisdom, and encouraging them to carry forward the work of the regeneration of France. In this posture of affairs the troops arrived in great numbers; Versailles assumed the appearance of a camp; the hall of the states was surrounded by guards, and entrance interdicted to the public; Paris was environed by several bodies of troops, which seemed posted to undertake, as need might be, a blockade or a siege. These immense military preparations, the arrival of trains of artillery from the frontiers, the presence of foreign regiments, whose obedience was without limits, every thing gave indication of sinister designs. The people were in agitation; the assembly wished to undeceive the king, and request the removal of the troops. On the motion of Mirabeau, it presented to the king a firm and respectful address, but in vain.[*] Louis declared that he was sole judge of the necessity of calling in or of withdrawing the troops, which he assured them were no more than an army of precaution, to prevent disturbances, and protect the assembly; he likewise offered to remove the assembly to Noyon or Soissons, in other words, to place it between two armies, and deprive it of the support of the people.[†]

Paris was in the most violent fermentation; that immense city was unanimous in its devotion to the assembly: its own danger, that of the national representatives, and the scarcity of subsistence, predisposed it to insurrection. The capitalists, from interest and the fear of a national bankruptcy, enlightened men and all the middle class from patriotism, the populace, oppressed by want, imputing its sufferings to the court and the privileged orders, desirous of agitation and of novelty, had ardently embraced the cause of the revolution. It is difficult to figure to one’s self the internal commotion which agitated the capital of France. Awakened from the repose and silence of servitude, it was still, as it were, astonished at the novelty of its situation, and intoxicated with liberty and enthusiasm. The press blew up the flame; the newspapers gave circulation to the deliberations of the assembly, and seemed to make their readers actually present at its meetings: and the questions which were there agitated, were again discussed in the open air, in the public places. It was in the Palais Royal especially that the deliberative assembly of the capital was held. It was thronged by a multitude, which seemed permanent, but which was perpetually changing. A table was the rostra, the first comer was the orator; they harangued on the dangers of the country, and exhorted to resistance. Already, on a motion made at the Palais Royal, the prisons of the Abbaye had been forced, and some grenadiers of the French guards carried off in triumph, Edition: current; Page: [9] who had been confined there for refusing to fire upon the people. This commotion had led to no result; a deputation had solicited, in favour of the liberated prisoners, the good offices of the assembly, who had appealed to the clemency of the king in their behalf: they had returned to their confinement, and had received their pardon. But this regiment, one of the bravest and fullest in its numbers, had become favourable to the popular cause.[*]

We give the sequel of this passage in the original, despairing to preserve its spirit in a translation.

After every allowance is made (and much ought to be made) for the deep interest of the events themselves, great praise is still due to the powers both of narration and description, which the above passage displays.

M. Mignet generally subjoins to each chapter a résumé of the progress of events during the period which it embraces. The same sort and degree of talent is manifested in these résumés which is conspicuous in the body of the work. We Edition: current; Page: [11] quote the following, though one of the longest, not because it is the best, but because it contains a summary view of the early history of the Revolution:

If one were to describe a nation which had just passed through a great crisis, and to say, There was in this country a despotic government whose authority has been limited, two privileged orders whose supremacy has been abolished, an immense population already enfranchised by the growth of civilization and intelligence, but destitute of political rights, and which, when they were refused to its entreaties, has been compelled to assume them by force; if to this it were added that the government, after resisting for a time, had at length yielded to the revolution, but that the privileged orders stedfastly persevered in their resistance, the following are the conclusions which might be drawn from these data:

The government will feel regret, the people will show distrust, the privileged orders, each in its own way, will make war on the new order of things. The nobles, too feeble at home to make any effectual opposition, will emigrate and stir up foreign powers, who will make preparations for an attack; the clergy, who abroad would be deprived of their means of action, will remain in the interior, and there endeavour to raise up enemies to the revolution. The people, threatened from without, endangered from within, irritated against the emigrants for exciting foreigners to hostilities, against foreigners for attacking its independence, and against the clergy for stirring up insurrections at home, will treat the emigrants, the foreigners, and the clergy as enemies. It will first demand that the refractory priests be placed under surveillance, next that they be banished, that the revenues of the emigrants be confiscated, and finally, that war be made upon confederated Europe, to prevent the disadvantage of having to sustain the attack. The original authors of the revolution will condemn those of its measures which are inconsistent with the law; the continuators of the revolution will see in them, on the contrary, the salvation of their country. A discord will break out between those who prefer the constitution to the state, and those who prefer the state to the constitution, the prince, impelled by his interests as king, his affections, and his conscience, to reject this policy, will pass for an accomplice in the counter-revolutionary conspiracy, because he will appear to protect it. The revolutionists will then attempt, by intimidation, to draw the king to their side, and, failing of success, they will subvert his power.

Such was the history of the Legislative Assembly. The internal tumults led to the decree against the priests; the menaces of foreigners to that against the emigrants; the confederacy of foreign powers, to the war against Europe; the first defeat of our armies, to the formation of the camp of twenty thousand. The suspicions of the Girondists were directed towards Louis, by the refusal of his assent to most of these decrees.[*] The division between that party and the constitutional monarchists, the latter wishing to appear legislators, as in time of peace, the former, enemies, as in time of war, disunited the partisans of the revolution. In the minds of the Girondists, liberty depended upon victory, and victory upon these decrees. The 20th of June was an attempt to compel the acceptance of the decrees; on its failure, they deemed it necessary to renounce the revolution or the throne, and they made the 10th of August. Thus but for the emigration which produced the war, and the schism in the church Edition: current; Page: [12] which produced the tumults, the king would probably have been reconciled to the revolution, and the revolutionists would never have thought of a republic.*

We have given this and other extracts in a translation with reluctance. Our only remaining specimen shall be in the original language.

The following is a brief but interesting résumé of the decline and fall of the virtuous and unfortunate Gironde:

Did space permit, we would gladly quote M. Mignet’s characters of the leading members of the Constituent Assembly. In general it appears to us that the characters of eminent men, which we read in historians, are very little to be depended upon. It is no easy matter to draw a character at once correct and complete, even of one who is personally known to us, if there be any thing about him more than common; but from hearsay, or from his public acts, it may be pronounced impossible. The troubled period, however, of the French revolution exhibited many of its actors in such varied situations, several of them very trying Edition: current; Page: [13] ones, that the data it affords for judging of their characters, though far from adequate, are less scanty than ordinary. M. Mignet has turned these data to the best account. His portraits seem accurate, and they are, at any rate, animated.

Our preliminary observations will have prepared the reader to find that we cannot speak altogether so favourably of M. Mignet’s reflections as of his narrative. The prevailing vice of French writers, since Montesquieu, is that of straining at point, at sententiousness, at being striking—we want a word—at producing an effect by mere smartness of expression; and from this vice M. Mignet’s work, though one of the best of its kind, is not wholly free. The sort of writers in whom this defect is conspicuous, and of whom, in recent times, Madame de Staël is one of the most favourable specimens, can never communicate a fact without edging in, to account for it, some axiom or principle, wide in its extent and epigrammatic in its form. Generalization in history is so far from being blamable, that history would be of no use without it, but general propositions intended to be of any use, concerning the course of events in matters where large bodies of men are concerned, cannot be compressed into epigrams; for there is not one of them that is true without exception, and an epigram admits not of exceptions. What do these generalizations amount to? Commonly to this: that something which has happened once or twice will happen always.

M. Mignet’s generalizations are, in most cases, the generalizations of an acute mind; but in his anxiety to be sententious, he almost always overdoes the generalization; he affirms that to be true in all cases which is only true in some, or enunciates without qualification a proposition which must be qualified to be defensible. He generalizes upon first impressions; and as first impressions are sometimes right, he often, by generalizing on the first impression of a remarkable fact, stumbles upon a valuable and even a recondite truth—a truth which, if it did not stand single among so many faux brillans, might be supposed to have emanated from a mind profoundly versed in human nature. When this happens, the point of the expression adds great force to the sentiment, and imprints it in the imagination. Here, however, M. Mignet is far excelled by Madame de Staël, whose chief merit, in our opinion, is the unrivalled felicity with which she has given expression to many important truths suggested to her forcibly by the circumstances of the times in which she lived, which will be remembered long after the brilliant paradoxes and pompous inanities, which she threw out in such abundance along with them, shall be forgotten.

“Quand on sait ce qu’on veut, et qu’on le veut vite et bien, on l’emporte toujours” (p. 357). Had he said souvent, the proposition would have been true: as it stands, it is extravagant.

“En révolution les hommes sont mûs par deux penchans, l’amour de leurs idées et le goût du commandement” (p. 442). Two very powerful forces, it is true; but that they are far from being the only ones which act upon man, “en temps de révolution,” is evident enough. The other principles of human nature are not suspended, during that period, or any other.

To have expressed accurately what there is of truth in these maxims, in such manner as to be intelligible, would have spoiled all the point of the phrase.

The following remark, with a slight qualification, contains the expression of an important fact: “Dès qu’on est en révolte, le parti dont l’opinion est la plus extrême et le but le plus précis, l’emporte sur ses associés” (p. 388). The party which has the most definite purpose commonly prevails; and this (as it happens) is generally the party which goes to the greatest lengths in matter of opinion. The men who have no fixed set of opinions follow the march of events: those who have, lead it.

The following is a profound remark, happily expressed: “Barrère, qui, comme tous les esprits justes et les caractères faibles, fut pour la modération, tant que la peur ne fit pas de lui un instrument de cruauté et de tyrannie” (p. 363). It is most true, as is hinted in this passage, that the great incentive to cruelty is fear.

We shall now take our leave of M. Mignet’s work, by recommending the perusal of it to all who desire either to be amused by a most entertaining and well told story, or to learn, by a few hours reading, what intelligent Frenchmen think and say on the subject of the French Revolution.

Modern French Historical Works

though we have not, like so many of our contemporaries, made it our grand occupation, to impress our countrymen with a deep sense of their own wisdom and virtue, and to teach them how proud they ought to be of every thing English, more especially of every thing that is English and bad; we are far from being unconscious how much they have really to be proud of, and in how many respects they might be taken as models by all the nations of the world. If we saw them in any danger of forgetting their own merits, we too might preach them a sermon on that hacknied text. But it is not their failing to underrate themselves, or to overrate other nations. They are more in need of monitors than of adulators; and we cannot but think that it may be of some use to them to know, that if there are some points in which they are superior to their neighbours, there are others in which they are inferior; that they may learn something from other nations, as well as other nations from them.

While the Quarterly Review is labouring to convince us that we are a century and a half in advance of our nearest continental neighbours,[*] it is impossible to shut our eyes to the fact, that those neighbours are at present making a much greater figure in the world of literature than ourselves. This is something quite new in the history of the two countries; it certainly was not the case before the French revolution; but it undoubtedly is the case now. While our littérateurs, with the usual fate of those who aim at nothing but the merely ornamental, fail of attaining even that; an entirely new class of writers has arisen in France, altogether free from that frivolousness which characterized French literature under the ancien régime, and which characterizes the literature of every country where there is an aristocracy. They write as if they were conscious that the reader expects something more valuable from them than mere amusement. Though many of them are highly gifted with the beauties of style, they never seem desirous of shewing off their own eloquence; they seem to write because they have something to say, and not because they desire to say something. In philosophy, they do not sacrifice truth to rhetoric; in history they do not sacrifice truth to romance. This change in the character of French literature is most of all remarkable in their historical compositions. The historians of ci-devant France were justly charged with despising facts, and Edition: current; Page: [18] considering, not what was true, but what would give scenic interest to their narrative; the French historians of the present day are distinguished by almost German research, and by a scrupulousness in producing vouchers for their minutest details, which forbids the idea of their having any thing in view but truth.

In the last five years France has produced many historical works of great importance; more than were ever produced by one nation within the same space of time. Some of these have been already mentioned in this journal;[*] others we may perhaps take a future opportunity of making known to our readers. At the present moment, two of the most important lie before us; and we have derived so much instruction as well as gratification from their perusal, that we purpose giving in the present article some account of their contents.

M. Dulaure has named his work a history of Paris: the title is less attractive than the book. It is a history of Paris, even in the ordinary sense; but if it had been no more, we should have left it to antiquaries, and to the amateurs of steeples, columns, and old tomb-stones. M. Dulaure’s work, as a topographical history, is admirable; but it has other and far greater merits. Our histories of London are histories of buildings,[†] but his subject is men. His history of Paris is a chapter of the history of mankind. After describing the city of Paris as it existed at each period of its history, he does what is not often done by antiquaries, he condescends to bestow some attention upon the inhabitants. This part of his book, which, we are happy to observe, has been detached from the rest, and printed as a separate work in two octavo volumes, is not so much a history of Paris, as a history of civilization in France; which is, to a great degree, the history of civilization in Europe. In it we may read how men were governed, and how they lived and behaved, in the good old times; subjects on which little is said in the vulgar histories, and that little is but little to be relied upon. M. Dulaure has one merit, which is not a common one with historians: he pays great regard to facts, and little to assertions. He has not been satisfied with taking upon trust from one author, what he had already taken upon trust from another. His work is not a mere register of the opinions of his predecessors, predecessors who did but register the opinions of their contemporaries. His ideas, such as they are, are his own.

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M. de Sismondi is already known to the public as a historian. His History of France, though it has not done every thing which a history of France might have done, may be pronounced worthy of his reputation; and, when completed, will supply an important desideratum in literature. Indeed, when it is considered in what spirit, and with what objects, all former histories of France had been written, it is matter of congratulation that they were as dull in manner as they were dishonest in their purpose, and deceptious in their tendency; and that the sphere of their mischievousness was considerably narrowed, by the happy impossibility of reading them. We have in our own history a standing example how deep a root party lies may take in the public mind, when a writer, in whom the arts of the most consummate advocate are combined with all the graces of style, employs his skill in giving them the colour of truth.[*] It is most fortunate, therefore, that the first readable history of France should be the production of a writer who is of no party, except that of human nature; who has no purpose to serve except that of truth, and whose only bias is towards the happiness of mankind. The chief defect of M. de Sismondi’s work, considered as a popular history, is the prolixity of the three first volumes; a space which, we should think, might have been better occupied than in relating how one dull, uninteresting battle or murder was succeeded by another exactly similar, in the reigns of the rois fainéans, or of the grandsons of Louis the Debonair. M. de Sismondi, perhaps, may urge in his defence, that his object was, to give a practical feeling of the state of society which he was describing: that, dull as these incidents are, their incessant recurrence was the sole characteristic of the period; a period the most distracted and miserable which is recorded in history: that to have merely related a battle and a murder or two, as a specimen of the rest, would have made but a feeble impression; and that it was necessary to convince the reader by tedious experience, that the history of the times consisted of nothing else. How far this apology might avail M. de Sismondi with ordinary readers, we do not consider ourselves perfectly qualified to judge: for ourselves, we think that our incredulity would have yielded to a less ponderous argument than three mortal volumes. It is but just to state, that these volumes do give, in a high degree, that practical feeling of the times, which they are apparently designed to convey, and that the reader who will have patience to go through them (for without reading them he will not fully understand the history of the subsequent period), will be amply repaid by the never-flagging interest which is kept up throughout the other six volumes.

All that is published of M. de Sismondi’s work, and the more novel and interesting part of M. Dulaure’s, relate to the middle ages; and to that period we shall, in the present article, confine our remarks; reserving the privilege of making ample use, on future occasions, of the important information which M. Edition: current; Page: [20] Dulaure has furnished relative to the later period of the French monarchy. Our purpose at present is, to do something towards forming, if possible, a correct estimate of what is called the age of chivalry. Hitherto, in this country especially, we have judged of that age from two or three of the facts, and no more: and even of those we have looked only at one side. The works before us are almost the first, in which any pains have really been taken to discover the truth with regard to the age of chivalry. In these, however, an ample stock of facts has been collected, and the subject is now ripe for a deliberate examination. All these facts lead but to one conclusion; and that conclusion is so directly at variance with the conceptions ordinarily entertained respecting the age of chivalry, that the very enunciation of it will be startling to the majority of readers; and it will not be embraced upon any evidence not absolutely irresistible. We are persuaded, however, that the more narrowly the records of the period are looked into, and the more accurately its real history becomes known, the more strictly conformable this conclusion will appear to historical truth.

The conclusion is, that the compound of noble qualities, called the spirit of chivalry (a rare combination in all ages) was almost unknown in the age of chivalry; that the age so called was equally distinguished by moral depravity and by physical wretchedness; that there is no class of society at this day in any civilized country, which has not a greater share of what are called the knightly virtues, than the knights themselves; that, far from civilizing and refining the rest of the world, it was not till very late, and with great difficulty, that the rest of the world could succeed in civilizing them.

If this conclusion be true, it must be obvious that there is not in all history a truth of greater importance. There is scarcely any portion of history the misapprehension of which has done more to rivet the most mischievous errors in the public mind. The age of chivalry was the age of aristocracy, in its most gigantic strength and wide-extending sway; and the illusions of chivalry are to this hour the great stronghold of aristocratic prejudices. All that is aristocratic in European institutions comes to us from those times. In those times lived our ancestors, whose wisdom and virtue are found so eminently serviceable in bearing down any attempt to improve the condition of their descendants. All those whose great grandfathers had names, and who think it more honourable (as it certainly is less troublesome) to have had brave and virtuous ancestors, than to be brave and virtuous themselves; all those who, loving darkness better than light, would have it thought that men have declined in morality in proportion as they have advanced in intelligence; all, in short, whose interest or taste leads them to side with the few in opposition to the many, are interested in upholding the character of the age of chivalry. “On nous a dit,” says M. de Sismondi,

Before we proceed to indicate, for we can but indicate, the evidence of the important proposition which is the grand result both of M. Dulaure’s and of M. de Sismondi’s work, we think it proper to exhibit a specimen of what may be termed a mild, candid, and well-bred mode of dealing with unwelcome assertions; for we are not, as yet, entitled to call them truths. It always gives us pleasure to meet with these virtues in a controversialist; and the serviles in France, to do them justice, seem nowise inferior to their English brethren in these points. No sooner did M. Dulaure’s work make its appearance than the hue and cry was raised against it. The sort of arguments, with which the book and its author were assailed, are nearly decisive of the great merit of both. Invective in general, and imputation of enmity to religion, royalty, and his country, in particular, these, together with defamation of his private character, are the reply which has been made to M. Dulaure’s work.†

We own that we are in general predisposed in favour of a man whom we hear accused by a certain class of politicians of being an enemy to his country. We at Edition: current; Page: [22] once conclude, that he has either actually rendered, or shown himself disposed to render, some signal service to his country. We conclude, either that he has had discernment to see, and courage to point out, something in his own that stands in need of amendment, or something in another country which it would be for the advantage of his own to imitate; or that he has loved his country well enough to wish it free from that greatest of misfortunes, the misfortune of being successful in an unjust cause; or (which is the particular crime of M. Dulaure), that he has given his countrymen to know, that they once had vices or follies which they have since corrected, or (what is worse still), which they have yet to correct. Whoever is guilty of any one of these crimes in this country, is a fortunate man if he escapes being accused of un-English feelings. This is the epithet which we observe to be appropriated to those, whose wish is that their country should deserve to be thought well of. The man of English feelings is the man whose wish is, that his country should be thought well of; and, above all, should think well of itself, particularly in those points wherein it deserves the least. The modern English version of the maxim Spartam nactus es, hanc exorna,[*] may be given thus—England is your country, be sure to praise it lustily. This sort of patriotism is, it would appear, no less in request with certain persons in France, than with the corresponding description of persons in England. Accordingly, M. Dulaure’s bold exposure of the vices and follies of his countrymen in the olden time, has been thought by many persons extremely un-French. But he shall speak for himself.

The countryman who, being present at a dispute in Latin, discovered which of the disputants was in the wrong, by taking notice which of them it was who lost his temper, would have had little difficulty in deciding between M. Dulaure and his ultra antagonists.

The tone of fearless honesty in the above passage, and the beautiful simplicity of its style, are maintained throughout the work, and may serve, once for all, as a specimen of its general character. Our whole remaining space will be far from sufficient to do justice to the more important subject of this article.

We premise, that whatever we may say against the age of chivalry, is or is not to be applied to chivalry itself, according to the ideas which the reader may attach to the term. If by chivalry be meant the feelings, habits or actions of an ordinary chevalier, we shall easily shew it to have been not admirable, but detestable. But if by chivalry be meant those virtues, which formed part of the ideal character of a perfect knight, it would be absurd to deny its beneficial tendency, or to doubt that the estimation in which those virtues were held contributed to render them more prevalent than they otherwise would have been, and by that means to elevate the moral condition of man. We propose only to inquire, to what extent any such virtues really were prevalent during the age of chivalry.

A few introductory observations on the feudal system (and on so hacknied a subject we promise that they shall be few) are an indispensable introduction to a view of that state of society of which the feudal system formed so important a feature.

It is now acknowledged, and therefore needs not here be proved, that the feudal system was not the work of contrivance, of skill devising means for the attainment of an end, but arose gradually, and, as it were, spontaneously, out of the Edition: current; Page: [24] pre-existing circumstances of society; and that the notion of its having been introduced into the countries of western Europe by their Gothic and Teutonic conquerors is wholly erroneous. It is now known that those barbarians were very like any other barbarians; and that without any refined notions of feudal or any other sort of polity, they spread themselves over the land and appropriated it. Their kings, like all other kings, had exactly as much power as they could get; that is to say, in a rude nation, more or less according to circumstances. Originally they enjoyed, during good behaviour, a considerable share of voluntary obedience, but had little power of enforcing any obedience which was not voluntary. They became powerful sovereigns, however, when the followers of a single chief, scattered in small parties over a large country, acquired the habit of looking to the king and not to their countrymen in a body, for protection in case of need.

The vigorous monarchs of the second race, from Pépin d’Héristal to Charlemagne, at first under the title of Maires du Palais, afterwards under that of kings, extended the Frankish empire over Germany, Italy, and a great part of Spain, as well as over Belgium and France. The military talents of these sovereigns, and the accession of power which they derived from their vast territorial acquisitions, put a finishing hand to the change which had been going on from the time of Clovis downwards, and the government of Charlemagne may be considered a despotic monarchy. As such, it shared the fate of other despotisms. After a few generations, the sceptre fell into the hands of princes entirely destitute of spirit and ability; the reins of government became relaxed; the power of the state became unequal to the protection of its subjects; disorder at first insensibly crept in, but soon advanced with gigantic strides; and the empire, which had spread itself from one end of Europe to the other, became incapable of opposing effectual resistance to the most contemptible aggressor.

In the despotic governments of Asia, this series of events has always been, from the beginning of history, of periodical recurrence. A Pepin founds a great empire, a Charlemagne consolidates it, which it then becomes the occupation of a series of Lothaires to lose. By the time it has reached the condition of Germany and France in the third and fourth generations of the descendants of Charlemagne, internal revolt or foreign invasion subverts the old dynasty, and establishes a new one; which, after a time, degenerates, and is in its turn displaced. Events took another turn among the conquerors of Europe. They had as yet no standing armies; the nurseries of that class of military adventurers who have always so much abounded in Asia, the materials and instruments of revolutions. Nor was a Genghis or a Timour found among the pirates of the north. The enemies whom Europe had to dread were a race who sought, not conquest, but plunder. The Danes or Normans, repelled from our own country by the vigour of Alfred, fell with redoubled fury upon France, and reduced its northern provinces almost to the condition of a desert. The government, which had, by this time, fallen into the last stage of Edition: current; Page: [25] decrepitude, could still less protect its subjects against these invaders, than it could protect them against one another.

A state of anarchy has this advantage over a despotism, that it invariably works its own cure. When the monarch could no longer protect his subjects, they were forced to protect themselves. Protect themselves they could not, except by combination: and they therefore combined. Where all were left to their own resources, it of course happened, that some had resources, and some had not. Those who had, were able to command assistance, and could therefore protect themselves: those who had not, were reduced to seek protection from others. The monarch, to whom they had been accustomed to look for protection, being no longer capable of affording it, their next recourse was to their strongest neighbour. Land was at that time the only source of wealth; the great landholder alone had the means of fortifying a castle, and maintaining a sufficient number of warriors to defend it. To him, therefore, all his neighbours, and among the rest the smaller landholders, had recourse. To induce the superior to extend his protection over their land and its produce, they had no return to offer except their aid in defending his. Here we see the principle of the feudal system. The forms of that system arose gradually; we have not room to show how.

The combination, which to its weaker members had been intended only as a means of defence, gave to its stronger head an accession of strength for purposes of attack. The weaker communities or principalities had often to sustain aggressions from the stronger; which they sometimes found themselves able to resist, and sometimes not. In the latter case, the same motives which had induced individuals to place themselves under the protection of a combination, induced the head of that combination, when in his turn attacked, to place himself under the protection of the head of a stronger combination than his own. And thus arose by degrees the great feudal principalities which we hear of for the first time during the decline of the Carlovingian race, and some of which were large and powerful kingdoms, when the authority of the feeble descendant of Charlemagne did not extend beyond the city of Laon and its vicinity.

In England, during the reign of Edward the Confessor, the formation of the feudal system had already proceeded thus far. Godwin Earl of Wessex, Leofric Earl of Mercia, Siward Earl of Northumberland, and others, were virtually independent princes, any one of them capable of coping single-handed with the acknowledged monarch of their common country. It has been supposed that the feudal system was introduced into England at the Conquest. But this is only so far true, that the great lords had not, until that epoch, become the vassals of the crown. In France and Germany, this last step in the formation of the feudal system was taken at a much earlier date; but in what manner, and when, is left, like every thing that is valuable in the history of that remote period, to inference and conjecture. It appears probable that the chiefs who, under the name of dukes and counts, had already Edition: current; Page: [26] exercised, by the king’s appointment, a delegated authority in the municipal towns, and who, in the decline of the royal power, had gradually withdrawn themselves from subjection, became the heads of all the greater combinations: or perhaps that the heads of those combinations found it convenient to obtain, from the petty prince who was still called king of France, a nominal delegation of his nominal authority, to facilitate the establishment of their ascendancy over the fortified towns; for an expiring authority always lingers in the towns for some time after it has lost all footing in the country. The transition was easy (when feudal ideas gained vigour) from this relation to the scarcely less nominal one of lord and vassal; for the paramountcy of the king was for many years almost a nominal privilege.

Thus arose the feudal system: of the workings of which we shall now attempt a rapid sketch. Our examples and proofs will be drawn chiefly from France. This, to an English reader, requires explanation. Our reasons for not selecting our own country as the theatre on which to exhibit feudality and its train of effects, are these:—In the first place, no one has yet been found to perform for England the service which has been performed by M. Dulaure for his own country; the toilsome and thankless service of dragging into light the vices and crimes of former days: and, secondly, the feudal system never existed in its original purity, in England. The kings of England enjoyed, from the Conquest downwards, a degree of power which the kings of continental Europe did not acquire till many generations later. There were no Godwins and Leofrics after the Conquest. The lands having come into the possession of the followers of the Conqueror at different times, as they were successively forfeited by their Saxon proprietors, all the various territorial acquisitions of a great baron were rarely situated in one part of the island, he was never strong enough in any one of his fiefs to establish his independence in that one, while the attempt, even if successful, would have involved the forfeiture of the rest. The king, therefore, was always stronger than any one, or any two or three, of his vassals. They could resist him only when combined. It is difficult to say how much of our present liberty we may not owe to this fortunate vigour of the royal authority, which compelled the barons to have recourse to parliaments, as the single means of effectual opposition to the encroachments of the king. This comparative strength of the general government of the country mitigated many of the worst evils of the feudal system. Great crimes could not be committed with the same impunity in England as in France. Private wars never prevailed to the same extent: it being the interest of the king to make himself the arbiter of all disputes, and his power being in general sufficient to enforce obedience. It was only in times of acknowledged civil war, such as the calamitous period which followed the usurpation of Stephen, that England was subject to those evils from which France never was free.

In Germany, on the other hand, the principal feudatories not only made themselves independent, but remained so. It is in France that we must contemplate Edition: current; Page: [27] the feudal system, if we wish to observe it in both its stages; the feudal aristocracy and the feudal monarchy; the period in which the great vassals were independent princes, and the period in which they were subjects. Each of these periods had its peculiar characteristics: we will begin with the first.

In the year 987, Hugh Capet, one of the chiefs who at that time shared France among them, usurped the throne. We have already stated the narrow limits, within which the possessions of the descendant of Charlemagne were at that time confined. Hugh Capet therefore acquired, as king of France, little territory beyond what he had previously held as count of Paris; a domain greatly inferior to that of the dukes of Burgundy or Normandy, or the counts of Flanders or Poitiers. It extended, in length, from Laon to Orleans, in breadth from Montereau to Pontoise. He and his immediate successors, being princes of no talent, instead of enlarging their territory or extending their influence, allowed what power they had to slip out of their hands; and, in the reign of Philip, third in descent from Hugh Capet, we find their authority bounded by the walls of five towns, Paris, Orleans, Etampes, Melun, and Compiègne.

The combinations which gave birth to the feudal system had, to a certain extent, answered their end. They afforded considerable protection against foreign, and some degree of protection against internal, assailants. The seed was put into the ground with some chance that he who sowed would be enabled to reap: and, from this time, progression in wealth and civilization recommenced. But, though some security to person and property is absolutely necessary to enable wealth to accumulate at all, the feudal system is a decisive experiment how small a portion of security will suffice.

Three classes composed, at this early period, the population of a feudal kingdom: the serfs who produced food, the nobles, or military caste, who consumed it, and a class of freemen who were neither nobles nor serfs: but this class, among the laity at least, soon terminated its short-lived existence. A class of freemen it can scarcely be called. Their freedom, the sort of freedom which they enjoyed, excluded them from protection, without exempting them from tyranny. The slave was at least secure from the oppressions of all masters but his own; the freeman was, like uninclosed land, the common property of all. We learn from the capitularies, or ordinances, of the Carlovingian race, that the ingenui, or free-born, were frequently forced to perform menial offices in the houses of the seigneurs: if poor, they were compelled to follow the nobles to the wars; if rich, they were amerced in an amount exceeding their property.* They were thus driven to seek subsistence and comparative security by becoming the slaves of their oppressors. As for the serfs, they were, literally, in the condition of domestic cattle; their master considered them as such, and treated them in the same manner, or rather, much more cruelly, because he feared them more. They were liable, at Edition: current; Page: [28] his will, to the infliction of any amount of stripes; to the loss of their ears, eyes, nose, feet, or hands, and, finally, of their lives. Power absolutely unchecked, in the hands of such men as the feudal chieftains, men utterly unaccustomed to control any impulse of passion, had its customary effect. We are informed that a hundred and fifty lashes were a frequent punishment for the most trivial fault.*

In order to form some further conception of this state of society, we have to imagine a perpetual civil war: war, not between two great divisions of the nation, which might rage in one district, leaving the others in tranquillity, but between every landed proprietor and his next neighbour.

That the knights of old were very easily affronted, is acknowledged by their panegyrists themselves. Even in these days, when that salutary instrument of moral discipline, the gallows, renders the consequences of an affront offered to an irascible neighbour somewhat less serious than formerly, we are not wont to regard irascible characters with much veneration or esteem. But we invest the irascible characters of former days with all the courage of a captain of dragoons, and so delighted are we with our own romantic conceptions, that we are ready to fall down and worship their imaginary original. When a knight was insulted, or thought fit to consider himself so, our notion is, that with scrupulous regard to all the niceties of modern honour, he sent his squire with a defiance to his enemy, challenging him to single combat. Possibly some knights might have been found who were thus punctilious; but the generality of them had a much less refined notion of the point of honour. Assassination, indeed, though horribly frequent, was but the exception, not the rule; or society must have ceased to exist. It was the labourers, and other cattle, on the offender’s estate, who in general paid the penalty of their master’s offence. The insulted party sallied out of his castle, and without any previous notice, proceeded to devastate the lands of his enemy; destroying the crops, burning the habitations, and carrying away both the species of live stock above spoken of. This done, he made haste to seek shelter in his castle, before his enemy had time to call together his vassals and pursue him. The other party, if he did not succeed in overtaking the plunderers, retaliated by entering upon the domain of the aggressor, and doing all the mischief he could. If they met, a battle took place; and woe to the vanquished! If unfortunate enough to be taken prisoner, he was subjected to the most excruciating torments, until forced to comply with whatever demands the victor’s rapacity might dictate. Catasta was the name of the most usual instrument of torture. The prisoner, being placed on an iron cage, or chained down upon an iron bed, was exposed, in that situation, to fire. One of M. Dulaure’s anecdotes will serve for illustration. Theobald V, Count of Chartres and Blois, a contemporary of our Henry II, and one of the most powerful feudatories north of the Loire, was engaged in hostilities with Sulpice, Seigneur of Amboise. His enemy fell into his hands, was put in irons, and exposed every day to the Edition: current; Page: [29] catasta. In vain did he offer large sums by way of ransom; the rapacity of the conqueror would be satisfied with nothing less than the possession of the town and castle of Chaumont. The required concession was at length extorted from the agonized captive: but his vassals still held the place, and refused to surrender it. His life speedily fell a sacrifice to this horrible torture.*

The celebrated anecdote of King John and the Jew’s teeth,[*] as it has, besides the cruelty, something whimsical in it, fixes itself in the memory; and is perpetually quoted as an extraordinary instance of the cruel treatment to which the Jews were subject in that reign. Yet what is this, compared to what we here see practised by one seigneur upon another? Judge what must have been the treatment of the mere knight, and still more that of the burgess and the slave.

The fortresses, in which the terrified cultivators took refuge, were generally strong enough to defy any means of attack which the art of war at that time afforded. But the strongest castle might be taken by treachery or surprise, and, on these occasions, men, women and children were cut to pieces. This, indeed, was in a manner the law of war. On the storming of a place, it was the ordinary course of events. We hear much of the horrible butcheries which were practised in the wars of religion, on the storming of a town. We imagine, few are aware that these butcheries were neither new nor extraordinary; that they were no more than what the barons practised in their most ordinary wars, both foreign and domestic, when they had not even the imaginary dictates of their horrible superstition to plead in excuse.

It was an easy transition from these exploits to highway robbery. This practice, we are accordingly informed, was universal among the poorer nobility. Any honest employment would have been disgraceful: they wanted money, if they had cities to pillage, it was well; if not, they pillaged travellers. An Indian Brahmin, when his profession fails him, is at liberty to engage in the occupations of that caste which is next in rank to his own: on a similar principle, the greatest chieftains of France, princes of the blood, and even kings themselves, when they could no longer support themselves by their respective vocations of governing and fighting, betook themselves to the profession of a highwayman as the next in dignity. Eudes I, Duke of Burgundy; another Eudes, brother to King Henry I; Philip, a son of King Philip I, and that monarch himself, are numbered among the high-born predecessors of Cartouche and Turpin. What was to them only an occasional resource, was to an inferior class of nobles their daily bread. Sometimes they sallied out, and waylaid pedlars on the highway, or pilgrims journeying with valuables to some sacred place: at other times they seized the peasants in the public market, stripped them of what they had, and detained them prisoners, or put them to the torture, to extort the disclosure of hidden treasure.

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When Louis VI, surnamed le Gros, the fourth descendant of Hugh Capet who filled the throne, and the first who was worthy of it, arrived at the age of manhood, the royal authority was at the lowest ebb. For many years of his life, he found full occupation in reducing his immediate subjects, the petty landholders of the royal domain, to a moderate degree of obedience. A description of the state in which he found that portion of France, may serve as a specimen of what must have been the condition of the remainder.

The rural counts, viscounts, and barons, who held immediately of the king, in the duchy of France, had availed themselves of Philip’s weakness to shake off his authority altogether, in the castles in which they had fortified themselves. From these castles they sallied forth and fell upon the travellers and traders (marchands) who passed within reach of their retreat, unless the latter consented to redeem themselves with a high ransom, they equally abused their strength against the monasteries, and against all the ecclesiastical lords. Sometimes they went and lodged with them, together with their squires, their soldiers, their horses, and their dogs, and required that the religious establishment whose forced hospitality they were enjoying, should defray the expense of their maintenance for months; sometimes they levied contributions in money or in kind, upon the peasants of the bishops or monks, as a compensation for the protection which these warriors promised to extend towards them. The barons, in particular, who were vassals of any ecclesiastical body, seemed to think that their vassalage itself gave them a title to the spoil of their clerical superiors.*

Louis, who was not only king of France, but the immediate feudal superior of these freebooters, found himself not only no match for their united strength, but scarcely able to cope with the lord of a castle single-handed. He prudently limited his first undertakings to the protection of the monasteries against the extortions of the nobility. By this means he obtained the sanction of the church, and the co-operation of the abbey troops, by whose aid he repressed the disorders of the principal Châtelains, and brought most of them into comparative subjection to his authority.

The names and designations of some of these worthies have been preserved to us. Hugh de Pompone, Seigneur of Crécy, and Châtelain of Gournay, infested with his depredations, not only the highway, but the river Marne, stopping passengers by land and water, and levying contributions. When attacked by Louis, this bandit was defended by his father, Guy, Count of Rochefort, and by Theobald, Count of Champagne. The fortress of Montlhéri, the patrimony and residence of a branch of the Montmorency family, was the retreat of a band of robbers, who desolated the whole country from Corbeil to Châteaufort, and interrupted all communication between Paris and Orleans. Hugh, Seigneur of Puiset, a place situated not far from the road which connects Chartres with Orleans, plundered travellers to the very gates of Chartres. Louis reduced his castle, and retained him for some time in confinement; but on his succeeding, by the death of an uncle, to the county of Corbeil, the relinquishment of this inheritance in favour of Louis was the price of his release. This lesson produced no change in his habits of life. No sooner was Edition: current; Page: [31] Louis occupied in another quarter, than he rebuilt, in violation of an express engagement, the fortifications of Puiset, seized the king’s peasants in the public market-place, and extorted sums of money by way of ransom.

But these were vulgar trespasses, hardly worthy of mention. It was reserved for Thomas de Marne, a baron of Picardy, to exemplify in its perfection the true greatness of villainy. “This seigneur,” says the abbot of Nogent.[*] quoted by M. de Sismondi,

had, from his earliest youth, continually augmented his riches by the pillage of travellers and pilgrims, and extended his domain by incestuous marriages with rich heiresses, his relations. His cruelty was so unheard-of, that even butchers, who nevertheless pass for unfeeling, are more sparing of the sufferings of the cattle which they are slaying, than he was of the sufferings of men for he was not contented with punishing them by the sword, for determinate faults, as people are accustomed to do, he racked them by the most horrible tortures. When he wished to extort a ransom from his captives, he hung them up by some delicate part of the body; or laid them upon the ground, and, covering them with stones, walked over them; beating them at the same time, until they promised all that he required, or perished under the operation.*

It was not until the twenty-second year of his reign, that Louis could subjugate this demon in human form. For eighteen years at least of this long interval, he continued his execrable mode of life; and might have continued it longer, had he not, when besieged in his castle of Coucy, been mortally wounded and taken prisoner in a sortie. “The king,” says M. de Sismondi, “tried to induce him, in his last moments, to release the traders whom he had kidnapped on the highway; whom he kept in prison to extort a ransom, or tortured for his amusement: but even in the agonies of death Coucy refused all mercy, and seemed to regret the loss of dominion over his prisoners, much more than the termination of life.”[†] Thus perished Thomas de Marne. But his eldest son Enguerrand de Coucy trod faithfully in his steps; and succeeded in making head against the whole power of the king. After being vainly besieged in the castle of la Fère, he was taken into favour, and received in marriage a princess of the blood royal.

In 1109, says M. Dulaure, one of those horrible occurrences, so frequent in the annals of feudality, took place at the castle of la Roche-Guyon on the Seine. The lord of this castle, Guy de la Roche-Guyon, is praised by contemporary writers for renouncing the practices of his father and grandfather: “Il était enclin à se conduire en homme probe et honnête, et s’abstenait de pillage et de vol: ‘Peut-être,’ adds one author, ‘se serait-il laissé aller aux habitudes de ses pères, s’il eût plus longuement vécu.’ ”† This chief, whom the chronicler supposes to have died just Edition: current; Page: [32] in time to save his virtue, was assassinated by Guillaume his brother-in-law, who, with the aid of several knights, laid an ambuscade in the chapel of the castle, and murdered Guy, his wife and children, and every other human being in the place. Had this been all, he might have retained the castle to the end of his natural life: but he was suspected by the neighbouring barons of being in an understanding with the English. They resolved to dislodge him. Being besieged in the castle, he opened the gates, stipulating for his life and liberty. It seems that some of the besiegers were not parties to the capitulation. Guillaume was massacred, together with the rest of the besieged: we are not told whether by those who had not engaged for his safety, or by those who had.

In this state was the royal domain, under the fifth of the Capets. But enough of causes; it is time to look at effects. Of the seventy-three years which composed the reigns of Hugh Capet, his son, and grandson, forty-eight were years of famine; being two out of three. Of these famines, pestilence was almost a uniform, cannibalism a frequent, accompaniment.* So much for the feudal system, and the perpetual civil war which was its consequence. In the long reign of Charlemagne we hear only of two famines; and even under the feeble Louis le Débonnaire, whose reign was disgraced by so many rebellions, there is only mention of one.† So much more destructive of security was feudal order, than what elsewhere goes by the name of civil war; and so endurable a thing is even despotism, compared with “liberty,” when all the liberty is for a few barons, and the mass of the people are slaves.

In this country, it has been the interest of the powerful, that the abominations of the clergy in the middle ages should be known; and accordingly they are known. But it has not been the interest of the powerful in this country, that the abominations of the barons should be known; and consequently they are not simply unknown, but their authors are believed to have been patterns of the noblest virtues. The clergy were, in reality, by many degrees the less wicked of the two. They at all times administered better justice to their vassals, than the military chiefs; they at all times discouraged depredations and private wars. True it is, that in their eyes these were secondary offences; it was not for such crimes that interdicts and excommunications were sent forth: these were reserved for the man who married his fourth cousin, or who presumed to summon an ecclesiastic before a secular court. Robbery and murder were not, it is true, sins of so black a dye as the foregoing; they were sins, however, and, as such, were condemned. To the exertions of the clergy was owing the truce of God, one of the most curious traits in the character of the times. In a council composed of laymen and ecclesiastics, held in the diocese of Perpignan, it was resolved that three days and two nights in each week should be allowed to the nobles, to fight, burn, and plunder, under certain Edition: current; Page: [33] restrictions; by which concession it was hoped to induce them to suspend those recreations during the remainder of the week. This attempt to compromise with the vices of the times, was not, we are told, at first, altogether unsuccessful. But the compact was not adopted in all the districts of France, nor even in the royal domain; and as there existed no means of enforcing its observance, it fell every where into desuetude. It being thought that the time allowed for pillage was possibly not quite long enough, it was enlarged to four days and three nights, and at length to nearly six days and five nights; but the shortest intermission of mutual devastation was more than could be endured.*

During the succeeding reigns, the power of the crown was gradually on the increase, and that of the great feudatories on the wane. Many of the most powerful fiefs became, by marriage or otherwise, integral parts of the English or French monarchies. The expulsion of the English from the north of France, by Philip Augustus, added their possessions to the royal domain; and the enfranchisement of the large towns, which uniformly allied themselves with the king against their old masters, enabled him to break the power of the feudal aristocracy. While this great change in the frame of society was going on, no improvement took place in the moral habits of the nobility. They continued to rob on the highway, and to quarrel and fight with one another, as before. Nor was it till long after the reign of Saint Louis, that the châtelains of France universally abandoned the profession of a highwayman. “Tels,” says M. Dulaure,

It is not asserted, that there were no exceptions to this general depravity. All which is contended for is, that the virtuous characters of those days were as much less virtuous than those of our own, as the wicked characters were more wicked, and that they were proportionally much more rare. Such is not the impression conveyed by the romances of chivalry; and it is the misfortune of modern writers, that they have mistaken the romances of chivalry for the history of chivalry. We shall be told, that romances are good evidence of manners. We answer with M. Roederer:‡ of manners, yes: of the characters of their heroes, not at all. The romances of chivalry did not even profess to represent the knights as they were, but as they ought to be. What would be thought of a writer who should seriously infer, Edition: current; Page: [34] that in the time of Richardson the character of an English gentleman resembled that of Sir Charles Grandison?[*]

Even Mr. Hallam does not believe in the reality of knights-errant; of persons who travelled about, liberating captives, and redressing wrongs.[†] But a romance must have a hero, and a hero must be a character to be admired. There never was a state of society (howsoever depraved) in which the character of a redresser of wrongs was not admired; on the contrary, it is admired in the direct ratio of the frequency of grievous wrongs. The romances of the east abound with good viziers: when the hero is a vizier, we may be sure he is always a good one: and how often does a good vizier arise? About as often as a good king: once in two hundred years.

One would expect to find the most admirable models of chivalrous virtue among those whose names and actions history has celebrated, and who were most admired by their contemporaries.* In these respects no chevalier ever exceeded Richard Coeur de Lion. A few anecdotes, therefore, of his life, will go far to illustrate, not only the practical morality of the age, but moreover its theoretical standard of moral approbation. This mirror of chivalry is first introduced to our notice in the character of a rebellious and treacherous son, intrusted by his father with the government of a province, and exciting that province to rebel. As Duke of Edition: current; Page: [35] Aquitaine, we find him carrying off the wives and daughters of his principal vassals; and, after keeping them until he was weary of possession, giving them away in presents to his followers.* When reconciled to his father, he turns round upon his former partizans, invades their territories, captures their towns, and loads them with exactions.† Again and again received into favour, again and again did he rebel. At length his father died, and he succeeded to the throne. His first act, in this new situation, was to place his father’s treasurer, Stephen of Tours, seneschal of Anjou, in irons: nor did he release him until (says Roger de Hoveden) he had delivered up all the late king’s money, and his own, to the last penny.‡

He appears to no greater advantage as a champion of the cross. It is related of him, that, when walking in the streets of Messina, he heard the cry of a hawk proceeding from the house of a peasant. A hawk, in England, was to plebeians a prohibited bird. Richard, forgetting that he was no longer in England, but in a country where the peasants had knives, and knew how to use them, entered the house, and took possession of the bird; but an assembled crowd speedily put him to flight. The same imperious temper and despotic habits soon after led him to commit a still greater outrage. A monastery, situated on the strait of Messina, appeared to him a convenient place for lodging his magazines: with him, to desire and to seize were one; he turned out the monks, and put a party of soldiers into their place. Disgusted at these and other acts of oppression, the inhabitants of Messina shut the gates upon Richard and his troops; a conflict ensued, and he forced his way into the place.§ Another anecdote, which is related of him while at Messina, is strikingly characteristic of his jealous and vindictive disposition. In the crusading army he had no rival in warlike exercises, except a French knight, named Guillaume des Barres. On one occasion, while the knights were exercising without the walls, an ass passed by loaded with reeds, which then, as now, were used in that country as vine props. They seized the reeds, and commenced a mock fight. Richard and Guillaume des Barres were opposed to one another. Their reeds were shivered at the first shock, but the reed of Guillaume tore Richard’s cloak. This insignificant mischance provoked Richard to such a degree of fury, that he rushed upon his adversary, and strove violently to unhorse him. In this endeavour he was defeated, which inflamed his passion still more; he swore that he would be for ever the enemy of Guillaume des Barres, and was mean enough to require that the king of France should withdraw his protection from that knight, and banish him from Messina. Nor was it till long after, that, by the entreaties of Philip, aided by those of all the barons and prelates in the army, who placed themselves on their knees Edition: current; Page: [36] before him, he was prevailed upon to restrain his resentment during such time as he and Guillaume should both wear the badge of the crusade.*

The conduct of Coeur de Lion, after the surrender of Acre, was even in that age remarkable for its ferocity. The garrison and inhabitants were to remain prisoners for forty days, at the expiration of which term, if not previously ransomed, they were to be at the mercy of the conqueror. Not being ransomed, they were, by Richard’s order, put to death in cold blood.†

On his return to England, having laid siege to Nottingham, he erected a gibbet within sight of the walls, and hanged several men-at-arms whom he had taken prisoners, to strike terror into the besieged.‡

At a later period, we find him raising the wind in a manner truly royal, by turning off his chancellor,[*] and declaring all the acts of that functionary null and void; obliging those whose titles were thus invalidated, to purchase valid ones, or forfeit their right.

We soon after find him swearing a truce with the king of France, and violating it immediately.§ Nor was this his last breach of faith. After resigning, by solemn treaty, the paramountcy of Auvergne to his rival the king of France, and even undertaking to aid him in enforcing the right against the unwilling Auvergnats, he broke the treaty, and made an alliance with the Auvergnats against their new liege lord. He very soon broke his faith with them too, and concluding a separate truce, looked on quietly, and saw them subdued. The truce expired, and hostilities renewed between the two kings. Richard had the assurance to renew his correspondence with the Auvergnats, claim their performance of the engagement which he himself had violated, and exhort them to renew the war. They were too prudent to be again deceived; and the royal troubadour consoled himself by composing satirical verses upon what he termed their breach of faith.¶

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But the reader has probably had enough of the “glory of chivalry.”[*] To be the glory of chivalry, indeed, nothing was necessary but the reputation of military prowess: a reputation founded upon achievements in war, and superiority in jousts and tournaments. The pomp and pageantry which adorned these exhibitions have captivated the imaginations, not only of contemporaries but of posterity; and when the imagination is gained, the reason, as experience shows, very seldom fails to follow. That the characteristics of a knight were undaunted courage and the most ardent desire of glory, is a proposition which has hitherto been taken for granted by the admirers, and hardly denied by the impugners of chivalry; and when we wish to say of any one that he is a pattern of all the military virtues, our expression is, that he is worthy of the age of chivalry. Now this proceeds, as it appears to us, upon a complete misapprehension. That courage and the love of glory were not uncommon among the knights, it would be absurd to doubt; since these are qualities which are never wanting, where there are dangers, and a public opinion. But that either quality was universal among them is the dream of a romancer; and we will venture to affirm, that there is more real courage in a single regiment of the British or French army in the year 1826, than there was in the whole chivalry of France or England five centuries ago.

We must not be misled by the great estimation in which military prowess was held. This is no proof of its universality, but the reverse. When particular examples of any virtue are extravagantly praised, it is a certain sign that the virtue is rare. It is pertinently remarked (we believe, by M. Dulaure), that there are at this day hundreds in the French army who possess all the heroic qualities which immortalized Bayard,* but who are utterly unknown, precisely because there are so many. Thus it is that we continue to talk of the continence of Scipio; yet, what mighty matter did this continence amount to? He did not ravish a beautiful woman, whom the fortune of war had thrown into his hands.[†] Now, if this be greatness, what subaltern officer, we were going to say, common soldier, in the British army, is not as great a man as Scipio? As a proof of Scipio’s continence, the story is Edition: current; Page: [38] ridiculous; but, as a proof of the lawless and brutal incontinence of his contemporaries, this one anecdote, though it be but an anecdote, is worth a thousand volumes.

The ardour of the knights for military enterprises was indeed universal. But this ardour was no proof of exalted courage. Their military enterprises exposed them to hardly any danger. Cased in impenetrable armour, they could in general defy all attempts on life or limb; and the battles of chivalry, how destructive soever to the almost unarmed infantry, were rarely fatal to the men-at-arms. It might be, that a few knights were trampled on by horses, or crushed, in falling, by the weight of their armour. But if unhorsed, and at the victor’s mercy, their lives were scarcely ever in any danger, except from private vengeance; it was neither esteemed dishonourable to give, nor to accept, a ransom; it was the law of war. To compare the courage of an average knight, with that of a modern private soldier, would be like drawing a comparison, for endurance of cold, between a man wrapped up in furs, and a barefooted and naked savage.*

Trifling, however, as was the danger of their warlike enterprises, they always courted in preference the least hazardous even of these. In their hostilities with one another, we have already mentioned that it was their great endeavour, after devastating the country, to escape to their strongholds without the risk of an engagement. They always preferred to encounter the inhabitants of the towns, who were destitute of defensive armour, and of whom they might hope to cut down thousands without the loss of a man. If, indeed, we look for real courage in the feudal times, we must seek it among those brave citizens, who did not fear, under such tremendous disadvantages, to face these terrible opponents in the field, in defence of all that they held dear. Among the few pages of the feudal annals which it gives pleasure to read, is that which records the glorious struggle which the burgesses of Flanders, forsaken and sold by their ally Edward I of England, maintained against Philippe le Bel and the whole chivalry of France. Thousands and thousands of them were cut to pieces; but they triumphed!

The taste of the chevaliers for tournaments, and other warlike exercises, may be as easily explained as their love of military adventure. M. de Sismondi treats both merely as the resources of désoeuvré savages to expel ennui. They sought excitement in the lists and in the field, as our German ancestors sought it by staking Edition: current; Page: [39] their liberty on the throw of a die. “Un esprit inquiet, un vague désir d’aventures, le besoin d’émotions, et l’espoir d’améliorer sa condition par la violence plus que par l’industrie, formaient alors le caractère de la noblesse Française.”* The following passage characterizes chivalry with equal vigour and accuracy. We give it in the original, because it is at the same time a specimen of the style of M. de Sismondi’s work:

M. de Sismondi’s two great stimuli, cupidity and ennui, were quite capable of leading them into danger, but it required another sort of qualities to bring them successfully out of it. As often as the demand for excitement and the demand for plunder brought a large number of them together in one enterprise, the same passions invariably hurried them into irregularities which put to hazard, if they did not frustrate, the success of the expedition. Their impatience of subordination made them regardless of discipline, and uncontrollable by the authority of their commander; their habitual thoughtlessness rendered them incapable of directing their own conduct, and they would not suffer it to be directed by any one else. Let the admirer of chivalry read the history of any enterprise of real danger in which they were ever engaged; of any of the crusades for example, more especially of the Edition: current; Page: [40] two last; let him mark, not only the rapine and cruelty, but the stupidity, the supineness, the headlong confidence, the incapacity of foreseeing and providing against the most obvious difficulties, which rendered their whole career one series of blunders and misfortunes. If he weighs all this, and moreover bethinks himself of the peculiar character of their warfare, by which even personal prowess was made to depend almost entirely on the steeds, the armour, and the bodily strength of the combatants,* he must acknowledge that the far-famed knights of the middle ages were nearly as destitute even of the military virtues, in any extended sense of the term, as they were of all other virtues whatsoever.

So much for the “cheap defence of nations.” Now for the “nurse of manly sentiment and heroic virtue.”[*]

The characteristic virtues of chivalry, according to Mr. Hallam, were loyalty, courtesy, and munificence.[†] Its claim to these qualities has in general been allowed; and it has, on this foundation, been without further question admitted to have been the great refiner of manners, and purifier of morals. Is this notion well grounded, or not? Let us inquire.

If by munificence be meant, according to Mr. Hallam’s definition, “disdain of money,”[‡] meaning disdain of wealth, not only this quality did not characterize the age of chivalry, but the diametrically opposite qualities did. In no age was the thirst for plunder a more all-engrossing passion, nor the source of more numerous or greater crimes. But if it be only meant, that the wealth which was lightly got was lightly squandered; that the feudal chief was profuse in bestowing upon the instruments of his strength, or the ministers of his vanity or his amusement, gifts which cost him nothing but the groans of his bondmen, or the blood of those of his neighbour; the little value set upon wealth thus obtained, is only a proof how lightly the crimes by which it was purchased weighed upon the conscience of the offender. When all that had been got by one crime had been expended, what could be more obvious than, by another crime, to get more?

Loyalty is defined by Mr. Hallam to mean, fidelity to engagements. By courtesy, was meant, not only ceremonious politeness, but good feeling and good conduct towards each other, and particularly towards prisoners.[§] Of both these qualities there were shining examples towards the conclusion of the age of chivalry. There was but little of either in the earlier period; and at no time were these virtues very commonly practised. While the feudal nobility retained their turbulent independence, no perfidy was thought too odious in order to gain an end, nor any abuse of power too flagrant when practised upon the defenceless. The Edition: current; Page: [41] treacherous devices which they employed to entrap one another, the horrid cruelties which they practised upon one another when entrapped, the assassinations which they sometimes perpetrated, sometimes (though more rarely) suborned, and of which the altar was not unfrequently the scene, are topics which we have already in some measure illustrated, and have not room to exhibit further. When one baron took a fancy to the wife of another, it appears, from several instances related by M. de Sismondi, that he made no scruple of carrying off the object of his passion, and marrying her; so much for the loyalty, the courtesy, and we will add, the religion, of the times.*

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But when the greater barons ceased to be independent sovereigns, and the smaller barons and knights to be subjects and retainers of those sovereigns; when their exploits came to be performed in national armies, and their virtues and vices to be exhibited on a great theatre, exposed to the view of whole nations; they then became, for the first time, amenable to a sort of public opinion. It is when individuals come under the influence of public opinion, that they begin to exhibit some glimmerings of virtue. But what kind of virtue? This will depend upon the kind of public to whose opinion they are amenable. The only public to which the knights of chivalry were amenable, was a public composed of one another. The opinion which other classes might form concerning their conduct, was a matter of too little importance to them to be at all regarded.

The consequences of this situation well deserve to be traced. Though it is not true of every individual that his interest makes his morality, it is strictly true of every class of men. When a set of persons are so situated as to be compelled to pay regard to the opinion of one another, but not compelled to pay any regard to the opinion of the rest of the world, they invariably proceed to fabricate two rules of action; one rule for their behaviour to one another, another rule for their behaviour to all persons except themselves. This was literally, strictly, what the chevaliers did. A chevalier was bound by the opinion of the chevaliers to keep his word with another chevalier, and to treat him, when a prisoner, with gentleness and respect. His own interest would prompt him to do so, if a man of common prudence; since he could not know how soon he might be a prisoner, and might have occasion to be released upon parole, or promise of ransom. But we are not to suppose that it was necessary for a knight to fulfil his engagements with any one except a knight. Exactly as the profligate man of fashion of the present day will pay a gaming debt to the last farthing, though it leave him pennyless, while he internally resolves never to pay his tradesmen at all: so would a baron keep his word with another baron, and break his word, and his oath too, with a low-born bourgeois.

History, though conversant only with events upon a great scale, affords abundant evidence to bear out this assertion. Notwithstanding the rapacity and avarice of the barons, their profusion rendered them in general needy. The towns, which at first were part of their domain, amenable to their jurisdiction and subject to their arbitrary exactions, took advantage of their wants to purchase, among other privileges, that of having an adminstration of justice and a municipal government of their own. This was a concession which nothing but the most pressing necessities could ever have extorted from those haughty superiors, and which they never afterwards thought of without resentment. No opportunity was missed of resuming the concession, and re-establishing their former supremacy over the town; retaining, however, the purchase-money of freedom. The pages of M. de Sismondi exhibit such numerous examples of this kind of perfidy, that it is impossible to suppose that it could have been considered at all disgraceful. Every privilege, in fact, which a town could succeed in wringing from the penury of its Edition: current; Page: [43] lord, was the commencement of a long struggle between the town and the seigneur; the seigneur struggling to get back his power, the townsmen to prevent him. If the lord succeeded, any new attempt to throw off his authority was called rebellion, and treated accordingly; for this also see Sismondi, passim.

King John of France, who was taken prisoner at Poitiers, is related to have said, that if truth and good faith had disappeared from the earth, they ought to be found on the lips and in the hearts of monarchs. This John, who was surnamed the Good, and who, if the anecdote be authentic, could talk in such magnifient terms about justice and good faith, had solicited and obtained from the pope, a few years before, for himself and his successors, a curious sort of privilege: it was that of violating all vows made and to be made, all oaths taken and to be taken, which they could not conveniently keep, quae servare commode non possetis, commuting them for other pious works.*

This John, who was a contemporary of the Black Prince and of Bertrand du Guesclin, and who lived, therefore, in the halcyon days of chivalrous virtue, had, it seems, but an indifferent opinion of the knights of his day. He accused the French knights of having become insensible to honour and fame: Honoris et famae, proh dolor! neglectâ pulchritudine.† The same prince, on hearing the song of Roland, observed, Il y a long-temps qu’on ne voit plus de Roland en France. An old captain, who was present, did not deny the fact, but threw all the blame of it upon the monarch himself: On en verrait encore s’ils avaient un Charlemagne à leur tête.‡ Deceived, like ourselves, by romances, even the chevaliers of that day looked back, it seems, with admiration, to the imaginary heroism of their forefathers. Yet this was the most shining period of the age of chivalry. It was also the last. A few years after, chivalry silently expired. The use of fire-arms became general. Cuirasses, as it turned out, were not bullet-proof. The chevaliers tried hard to render them so, by making them thicker and thicker, heavier and heavier, till at last (says Lanoue) Il n’y avait homme de trente ans qui n’en fût estropié.§ Finding that all this would not save them from gunpowder, the cowards forsook the field, and abandoned the defence of their country and their liege-lord to hired soldiers—to plebeians.

Such was the age of chivalry. But to all our denunciations of the vices of that age, one glorious exception must be made. Either the whole testimony of history is false, or Saint Louis never violated his word, nor swerved from what he thought the dictates of his conscience. Historians have not done justice to Saint Louis. He has been pictured as a virtuous man, but a slave to priestcraft. Nothing can be more Edition: current; Page: [44] unfounded. His mind was strongly tinctured with the superstitions of the age; he conceived the deity not as an indulgent father, but as an irritable and jealous master; all this is true: but it is not true that he was priest-ridden; for he several times resisted not only his clergy, but the pope himself.* He followed the dictates of his own mind. His ideas of religious duty were his own; and every action of his life was governed by them. He thought it his duty to persecute, and he did persecute; he thought it his duty to be an ascetic, and he was an ascetic; but he also thought it his duty to keep his word, and he kept it inviolably; he thought it a sin even to retain what his predecessors had unjustly acquired, and he made restitution with the most scrupulous exactness. He was a perfect specimen of a mind governed by conviction; a mind which has imperfect and wrong ideas of morality, but which adheres to them with a constancy and firmness of principle, in its highest degree perhaps the rarest of all human qualities.

When we contemplate one who in so barbarous an age, and under all the temptations of power, although misled by a bad religion, did not make that religion a substitute for morality, but devoted himself to the fulfilment of his real duties, with the same earnestness as his imaginary ones, we admire even the power over himself which his austerities display; we lament the erroneousness of his opinions, but we venerate the man. Very differently are we affected by the religion which characterized the times. The knights and nobles of the day were as pious, many of them, as Saint Louis himself; but how different a piety! All his intolerance was theirs, without a spark of his virtue. When we read of their crusades, their pilgrimages, and their persecutions, we are apt, by a natural mistake, to speak of their fanaticism. But fanaticism is far too respectable a name. Fanaticism supposes principle: the notion of fulfilling a duty. Their fires were kindled not to fulfil a duty, but to escape from its fulfilment. They thought to strike a bargain with Omnipotence; to compound for one crime by practising another. It was not from principle, but from mere selfishness, that they burned heretics, slaughtered Saracens, and plundered Jews. They imagined that he who sacrificed hecatombs of unbelievers to the God of mercy, was freed from every moral obligation towards his fellow-men. Never did their religion for a moment stand in the way of their passions. In sacking a town, neither priests, nor nuns, nor crosses, nor relics, were sacred to them.† In their private wars, the church lands, being an easier prey, were even less respected than those of one another; nor were their devastations restrained by that excommunication which encroachments upon that species of property invariably entailed. But they had been taught that by giving way to their darling passions, their avarice and cruelty, against the miscreants who denied the faith, they atoned for the indulgence of the same passions against the true Edition: current; Page: [45] believers. The publication of a crusade, especially against the emperor or the Albigenses, was commonly accompanied by an offer to the champions of the cross, of—what? Remission of all sins, past and future, in the other world, together with permission to rob their creditors in this. They were exempted, during the crusade, from the payment of interest on their debts. The cunning priests, who added this earthly recompense to the heavenly one, knew well the sort of persons with whom they had to deal. That some of the crusading knights were mainly influenced by motives of religion, is as true, as that some were influenced by the desire of military glory; but the great bulk were influenced by nothing but M. de Sismondi’s “deux mobiles de la noblesse,” cupidity and ennui.

There is one feature in the chivalrous character which has yet to be noticed; we mean, its gallantry. And this we shall think it necessary to examine the more fully, because we are persuaded that nine-tenths of the admiration of chivalry are grounded upon it. We own it is hard to speak ill of men who could make vows to their lady-love that they would wear a scarf over one eye till they should have signalized her charms by some exploit, or who could leave the ranks and challenge one another to single combat, to settle which man of them adored the most beautiful mistress. We trust, however, that without treason to the fair sex, of which we profess ourselves devoted admirers, it may be permitted to doubt whether these fopperies contributed much to the substantial happiness of women, or indicated any real solicitude for their welfare. To us it seems very clear, that such demonstrations of eagerness, not to make a woman happy, but to make the whole world acknowledge the pre-eminence of her charms, had their source in mere vanity, and the love of distinction; and that the knight who fought a duel concerning the beauty of his mistress, because she was his mistress, would have done the same thing for his falcon, if it had been the fashion.

If it could be proved that women, in the middle ages, were well treated, it would be so decisive a proof of an advanced stage of civilization, as it would require much evidence to rebut. That they were so treated, however, is not to be believed without proof. That a knight prided himself upon the beauty of his mistress, and deemed his honour concerned in maintaining it at the sword’s point, is no proof. In the Asiatic kingdoms, in which, above all countries in the world, women are not only practically ill-treated, but theoretically despised, the whole honour of a family is considered to be bound up in its women. If their seclusion is intruded upon; if the foot of a stranger profanes the zenana, the disgrace is indelible. This is one species of foppery: the gallantry of the middle ages was another: and, like the ceremonious politeness which distingished alike the chevaliers and the orientals, they characterize that period in the progress of society, which may be termed the age of false refinement, and which is situated half way between savage and civilized life.

Good treatment of women, we have already observed, is one of the surest marks of high civilization. But it seems to be very little considered, in what good Edition: current; Page: [46] treatment of women consists. It does not consist in treating them as idols to be worshipped, or as trinkets to be worn for display; any more than in shutting them up like jewels in a case, removed from the light of the sun and the sight of men. In both cases, this treatment is a proof that they are valued; else why are so much pains taken about them? But in both cases they are valued exactly like beautiful trinkets; the value set upon them is quite compatible with perfect indifference to their happiness or misery.

Professor Millar, perhaps the greatest of philosophical inquirers into the civilization of past ages, has observed, with truth, that during the savage state, when the attention of men is wholly engrossed by the pursuit of the necessaries of life, the pleasures of sex are little regarded, and little valued; but as soon as the satisfaction of their more pressing wants gives leisure to cultivate the other enjoyments within their reach, these pleasures are among the first which engage their attention. If the savage state is, of all others, that in which the sexual passion is weakest, the half-savage state, or the state immediately bordering on barbarism, is that in which it is strongest.[*] This remark explains the treatment of women in feudal Europe, as well as in Asia, different as their condition in these two states of society may appear. In Asia, where food could always be obtained with comparatively trifling labour, and where very little clothing and lodging were necessary either to existence or to comfort, the savage or hunting state seems never to have existed; the pleasures of sex were probably cultivated from the beginning, and, man abusing his natural superiority, the women were made slaves. In Europe, on the contrary, as among the North American Indians, women were not valued as sources of pleasure, and were not valuable for the labour of hunting, in that state of society the only kind of hard labour. No motives, therefore, existed for reducing them to bondage; and when these barbarians over-spread the Roman empire, and, possessing themselves of the land, began to lead an idle life instead of a laborious one, this new state of society found the women free. From this circumstance arose the different situation of women in Asia and in feudal Europe. In the latter, where they were free, to obtain the woman who was the object of desire became often a matter of extreme difficulty, and generally could not be effected without her own consent: in the former, where they were slaves, to obtain any number of women independently of their consent, became, to a rich man, a matter of no difficulty at all; and his solicitude was transferred to the means of keeping them.

We thus see that the seclusion of women in Asia, and the idolatry of them in Europe, were both marks of the same low state of civilization. The latter, no doubt, gave to some women for a time more power. But we must not overrate the value of this power to their happiness. The question is not, how much power a knight would give his mistress leave to fancy she exercised over him, in order that she might Edition: current; Page: [47] consent to his obtaining power over her; but in what manner he employed his power over her when obtained. Of the domestic lives of the knights, we have hardly any direct information; and in the absence of any, we may proceed upon the general presumption, that men who were brutal towards one another, would not be less brutal towards their wives. Allowing that a woman who had been an object of desire, and who was still a source of vanity from her personal charms, might command tolerable treatment on account of those charms, while they lasted, and on account of her children at a later period; we profess ourselves not to be of the number of those who sympathize exclusively with beautiful women. Although the heroines of romances were somehow always beautiful, it may yet be inferred, from the inherent probabilility of the thing, that there were ugly women in those days as well as in our own; though we are left to conjecture what sort of treatment may peradventure have been undergone by such ill-fated females, if any such there were. A knight who had to maintain at the point of the sword, that his lady was the most beautiful lady in the whole world, would, in common prudence, attach himself to some fair one, whose pretensions to that character might be maintained without subjecting him to any extraordinary degree of ridicule. We know, in point of fact, that a small number of beautiful women engrossed all the admiration and all the vows of all the knights, and that the large and unattractive majority were altogether neglected. It is the treatment of them, however, and not that of their more attractive sisters, which is the test of civilization.

There is positive evidence, how little regard was paid by a warrior of the age of chivalry, to the feelings even of the object of his passion, when he had the power of gratifying that passion independently of her consent. If a baron happened to be smitten by the charms of the daughter of one of his vassals, he demanded of her father, as a matter of course, that she should be yielded up to his embraces.* The frequency of rapes and abductions, even in the case of women of elevated rank, is another important proof how little connection the foppish gallantry of that age had with the real happiness of the sex affected to be adored. We have mentioned in a former page the chivalrous treatment of the Gascon ladies by Coeur de Lion. Matilda, daughter of Malcolm III, King of Scotland, while residing in England previously to her marriage with our Henry I, is well known to have taken the habit of a nun, “not,” says Hume, “with a view of entering into a religious life, but merely in consequence of a custom, familiar to the English ladies, who protected their chastity from the brutal violence of the Normans, by taking shelter under that Edition: current; Page: [48] habit, which, amidst the horrible licentiousness of the times, was yet generally revered.”*

We reject the giants of romance; why should we continue to believe in the reality of the knights-errant, their antagonists? Yet if both are the representatives of really existing personages, let us remember that the knights who liberated imprisoned damsels were few, while the giants who held these damsels in durance were many; and that the prototypes of the giants were knights and noblemen, though they were not knights-errant.

Though it is almost unnecessary to add, that whatever portion of power or good treatment the women enjoyed, was confined entirely to the women of rank, and that all other women were, like their husbands, slaves; we will, however, conclude our observations on this subject, by a very sensible passage from M. Roederer’s work, already alluded to, in which this as well as some other very pertinent observations are forcibly put. The age of chivalry, he says,

We have dwelt so long upon the period of the feudal aristocracy, that we have not time to give a detailed character of the feudal monarchy; and perhaps it will be better, before attempting the task, to wait for the additional materials which we may expect to find in the next portion of M. de Sismondi’s history. We shall content ourselves with mentioning a few facts, merely to show that the aristocracy did not change its character during the two or three centuries which followed its subjugation by the crown.

Enguerrand de Coucy, having seized two young noblemen, who, with their preceptor, had trespassed on his forests in pursuit of rabbits, hanged them all three. In the reign of any other prince than Saint Louis, he might possibly have come off with impunity. Saint Louis at first intended to put him to death, but at the intercession of all the great barons, he contented himself with imposing a heavy Edition: current; Page: [49] fine, and three years exile in Palestine, with the forfeiture of the seignorial rights of haute justice, and garenne: of keeping rabbits, and of judging men.*

Guy de Montfort assassinated Henry, son of Richard, Duke of Cornwall, before the altar, at Viterbo.†

Saint Louis besieged the castle of La Roche de Gluy upon the Rhone, to punish its lord for practising robbery on the highway: having made himself master of the castle, he restored it to its owner, first stipulating for the discontinuance of his depredations.‡

The next person of whom we shall make mention is Amalric, Viscount of Narbonne, who, having the droit de justice, violated the laws, and, what was of more consequence, offended the monarch, by putting to death two of his own vassals, notwithstanding their appeal to the royal court. Amalric’s sovereign was far from being a Saint Louis; he imprisoned the rebellious vassal for a time, then took him from prison and put him at the head of an army.§

Jourdain de l’Isle, sire (seigneur) of Casaubon, after receiving the royal pardon eighteen times for different offences, was hanged the nineteenth for rape, rapine, and murder. This happened under Charles IV, in 1323.

Hannot and Pierre de Léans were hanged in 1332, for assassinating la demoiselle Péronne d’Estreville in the church.

Mathieu de Houssaie was condemned to a gibbet in 1333; Jourdan Ferron, a damoiseau or page, in the same year. In the following year eleven nobles were executed (suppliciés) for the assassination of Emeri Béranger.

Adam de Hordain, another knight, was hanged in 1348, and so on.¶ It was not till the climax of the power of Louis XIV, that the nobles were reduced into perfect obedience to the laws.

As the king’s government, however, increased in strength, assassination became too dangerous to be openly practised, and a safer mode of taking vengeance upon an enemy now came into vogue. Accusations of poisoning became frequent, and gained general credit. The imperfection of the courts of justice, and the peculiar nature of this crime, generally prevented the fact from being judicially proved; but the generality of the suspicion is a sufficient proof of the spirit of the times. Another mode of getting rid of an enemy was suggested by the superstitions of the day. The practice of enchantments, for the destruction of particular persons, became very frequent. The efficacy of these operations was imaginary, but the intention was real. Waxen images, says M. Dulaure, play a very conspicuous part in French history. A waxen image was constructed, as nearly as possible resembling the person intended to be destroyed; a priest was Edition: current; Page: [50] employed to baptise the image by the name of the intended victim, and it was then tortured, mutilated, or pierced through and through, with the proper forms of incantation. The effect of the operation thus performed upon the image, was supposed to be felt by its human namesake in his own person.

The gradual disuse of trial by battle, which was abolished by Saint Louis in his own domains, and discouraged every where, both by him and his successors; the substitution of technical procedure in the king’s court, and the gradual supercession of the seignorial jurisdictions by the royal ones, gave rise and encouragement to another sort of crime, judicial perjury. This, which is perhaps the most pernicious of offences, because it destroys the efficacy of the remedy against all others, and the frequency of which is, for that and other reasons, one of the most decisive tests of the moral depravity of a nation, became, if we may credit historians, horribly frequent. Corruption in the judges also became a common offence.*

When the nobles no longer enjoyed any power of their own, except over their serfs and domestics, they had no chance for importance but by resorting to the court, and rivalling with one another in magnificence and servility.† The means of magnificence had to be squeezed out of their vassals, whose situation consequently became more miserable than ever.‡ The same cause brought about a considerable change in the manners of the nobility. No longer permitted to seek excitement in private wars, they sought it in the licentiousness of a court. Intrigue took the place of rape, as poisoning had done of assassination. The manners of the later period of the age of chivalry, and of the age which immediately succeeded it, as they are pictured in Brantôme[*] and other works of his day, were dissolute to a degree never since equalled. Nor did their debauchery resemble the refined gallantry of the court of Louis XV; it was coarse and gross to a degree of which even the language of Rabelais is hardly an exaggeration. To sum up all in few words: when the vices of a highwayman ended, the vices of a courtier began.

We had intended to quote some striking anecdotes of the times; such as the expedition of the pastoureaux, the destruction of the Templars, the pretended conspiracy of the lepers to poison the fountains and subvert Christianity: and to have sketched the persecutions of the Jews and of the Albigenses, and the still more extraordinary persecution of the mendicant Franciscans, for offending the Edition: current; Page: [51] pope, by denying that their meat was their own at the moment when they were putting it into their mouths. But these, and innumerable other interesting facts, which M. Dulaure and M. de Sismondi have recorded, we must content ourselves with exhorting the reader to gather from those authors themselves. Both works are as delightful in style, as they are important in matter. The manner of M. Dulaure is characterized by extreme neatness and exquisite simplicity, and carries the reader along with it, by its deep earnestness, and high tone of moral feeling. To one who is daily sickened by the repulsive tone of heartless levity, and recklessness about good and evil, which is one of the besetting sins of our own literature in the present day, this quality of M. Dulaure’s work renders it peculiarly attractive.* M. de Sismondi’s style is more diffuse, but almost always sprightly, and frequently eloquent. His eloquence, however, flows naturally from him; neither he nor M. Dulaure is infected by that rage for fine writing, which is the bane of all real eloquence; they never declaim, never hunt after common-place metaphors, but speak the plain and unaffected language of men who wish that the reader should think of their ideas more than of themselves.

There is little appearance in M. Dulaure’s work of a generalizing, that is, of a philosophical, mind: he states the facts as he finds them, praises and censures where he sees reason, but does not look out for causes and effects, or parallel instances, nor applies the general principles of human nature to the state of society he is describing, to show from what circumstances it became what it was. It is true he does not profess to be a historian, but only to sketch a tableau moral M. de Sismondi aims much more at generalization; and the reflections with which he frequently commences his chapters, exhibit far more of the genuine philosophy of history, than is to be found in any other work on the middle ages (those of Professor Millar excepted)[*] with which we are acquainted.

The badness of those ages will now be thoroughly understood by a large class of readers in France. In this country, we cannot hope that it will be comprehended as yet. There is no popular book on the middle ages in our language; nor any book in which the truth is plainly and fully told concerning chivalry and its times. Millar’s Historical View of the English Government, though admirable as far as it goes, is rather a history of institutions, than of morals and manners, and when it does touch upon the latter, is not detailed enough to give any thing like a vivid conception of the times. The design of the work, moreover, is confined to our own country. Yet he is almost the only writer we have, who has made the middle ages a subject of philosophical investigation. There is, indeed, Mr. Hallam; but we should be much Edition: current; Page: [52] surprised if the nation which has produced a Millar, could admire or read the History and Government of Europe during the Middle Ages. This work appears to us equally faulty in the design and in the execution. In the first place, the design is fundamentally bad. The work is neither a history of Europe, nor a history of European civilization. Considered as a history of Europe, it is the most meagre of abstracts. Conceive an attempt to write “the history of France from its conquest by Clovis to the invasion of Naples by Charles VIII,” in one chapter of ninety-nine quarto pages! It is evident that nothing worth relating of the history of France could be included in that compass: it is not a historical sketch, but a chronological table, or the table of contents to a historical work; and it is long since we remember to have read ninety-nine duller pages. If, on the other hand, the work was intended to be a history, not of Europe, but of its civilization, why encumber it with several hundred pages of tiresome and useless narrative? Even in the dissertations, which compose the remainder of the work, we cannot help seeing much more of pretension than of real merit. Mr. Hallam is not wanting in liberality; his leanings are in general towards the side of the many; his incidental remarks are frequently pointed in expression, and occasionally soar somewhat above the level of common-place. But he has neither discernment enough to see through any reigning error, nor philosophy enough to trace the causes and consequences of the things which he describes; but deals out little criticisms and little reflections, and little scraps of antiquarian lore, which neither throw any light upon the condition of mankind in the middle ages, nor contribute either to support or illustrate any important principle: in fine, he has succeeded in rendering a sketch of one of the most remarkable states of society ever known, at once uninstructive and tiresome. The best part of his work is that which relates to our own country. In this part he must be allowed the merit of having resorted to the original authorities, and established several interesting points of constitutional history. But considering him as a historian of the middle ages, we are compelled to pronounce his work an utter failure. Its want of merit is rendered still more striking, when compared with the merit of other writers. To appreciate Mr. Hallam, it is not even necessary to have read Millar; it is sufficient to have read Sismondi.

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SCOTT’S LIFE OF NAPOLEON 1828

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EDITOR’S NOTE

Westminster Review, IX (Apr., 1828), 251-313. Headed: “Art. I.—The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, Emperor of the French. With a Preliminary View of the French Revolution. By the Author of ‘Waverley,’ &c. [Walter Scott.] In Nine Volumes. Edinburgh [: Cadell; London. Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green], 1827.” Running titles: “French Revolution— / Scott’s Life of Napoleon.” Unsigned. Pamphlet offprint, with title page reading: “A / Critical Examination / of the / Preliminary View / of the / French Revolution, / prefixed to / Sir Walter Scott’s Life of Bonaparte. / With Observations on the Work Itself. / From the Westminster Review, No. XVIII.” Printed London. Hansard, 1828. Headed: “Critical Examination, &c. &c. &c.” Paginated 1-63; no running titles. Unsigned. Identified in Mill’s bibliography as “A review of Sir Walter Scott’s Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, in the 18th number of the Westminster Review” (MacMinn, 10). The copies of the offprint in Mill’s library, Somerville College, have no corrections or emendations.

For comment on the essay, see xliii-xlvi and xcv-xcvi above.

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Scott’s Life of Napoleon

sir walter scott cannot write any thing which, as a literary composition, will not be read with pleasure; and if it were possible to consider the work before us merely as a well-told story, we are not sure that it is inferior even to the most perfect of his former productions. Few books, indeed, have ever afforded so much for minute criticism to fasten upon; and that description of critics with whom the substitution of one connecting particle where another would have been more appropriate is a crime for which all the higher excellencies of composition cannot atone, have made so great a noise concerning its small blemishes, that comparatively little has been heard of its uncommon merits.[*] But the extreme of carelessness in the minutiae of style, a fault always more endurable than the opposite one of a too studious and visible attention to them, is pardonable, and almost allowable, in a writer who has merits of so much higher a rank than mere correctness. In Sir Walter Scott, no faults are worth noting except those which impair the effect of beauties. The author who could conceive and execute the admirable narrative of Napoleon’s first Italian expedition, in the third volume,[†] could afford to be inelegant, to be even ungrammatical, in every page. His occasional repetitions, and the intermixture of many inappropriate, among many felicitous, similies, will be forgiven by those who know how few writers are capable of unfolding a complicated and intricate train of events so that it shall appear simple and intelligible, and of maintaining, throughout a voluminous work, so lively, rapid, and spirited a style, that the interest never flags, the attention never is wearied; in which qualities this work pre-eminently excels.

But these excellencies do not suffice to constitute a history. From that which is offered to the public as a record of real events, something more is required than that it should be sprightly and entertaining. The Life of Napoleon would be admirable as a romance: to have made it any thing higher, would have required far other endowments than had been displayed even in the most finished performances of the Author of Waverley.[‡]

If it be any part of the duty of an historian to turn the facts of history to any use;Edition: current; Page: [56] and if a fact can be of use only by being made subservient either to the confirmation or illustration of a principle; the historian who is fit for his office must be well disciplined in the art of connecting facts into principles, and applying principles to the explanation of facts: he must be a man familiar with generalization and general views; a man whose knowledge is systematic, whose mind can embrace classes as well as individuals, who can discriminate between the results of narrow and partial observation, and those of enlarged experience; in short, a philosopher. Further, if it be ever the duty of an historian to elicit real facts, from vague, scanty, or conflicting, testimony, it is necessary that he should be profoundly skilled in the difficult art of weighing evidence: he must be capable of combining together a chain of circumstances, each of which proves nothing by itself, but every thing when skilfully combined; he must be practised in striking the balance between opposing testimonies, or between testimony on the one side and probability on the other; he must be, to sum up this also in one word, a consummate judge. Sir Walter Scott’s title to these high qualifications still remained to be established. It is in the present volumes that we must look for the proof of it, if proof is to be found.

Of the degree in which he possessed those more common qualities, which suffice for giving a correct statement of ordinary events—the qualities of industry, candour, and impartiality—the public had some means of judging from his previous performances. And first, with respect to industry; while his earlier writings had proved how much he is capable of, his later ones had afforded no less conclusive evidence, that any degree of pains employed upon his productions, more than was necessary to their sale, was, in his estimation, superfluous. Applying himself in this frame of mind to the composition of an historical work, it was not very likely that he should have recourse to any other than the vulgar authorities, nor, consequently, that he should take any other than the vulgar view of the events which he relates. And the celerity with which he projected and completed a work which, to execute it tolerably, would have required many years reading, was a satisfactory proof, if there were no other, that, on this point at least, the presumption had not been fallacious.

With respect to his candour: if the studied forbearance towards political adversaries which distinguishes his writings, had flowed from a genuine, passionate, and overpowering love of truth, there would have been room for highly favourable anticipations indeed. But the prevailing tone of his works in every other respect, forbids us to ascribe to any such cause his specious semblance of impartiality. There is sufficient evidence in Sir Walter Scott’s writings, that he is a person of a mild and tolerant disposition, constitutionally exempt from acrimony of all kinds, with a decided bias towards aristocratic persons and aristocratic opinions, but not attaching so much importance to the difference between one opinion and another, as to feel, even towards persons of the most opposite principles, much positive dislike. This original liberality, and almost indifference, in matters of opinion, enabled him to fall easily into a practice which he appears to Edition: current; Page: [57] have prescribed to himself from an early period—that of adopting such a mode of writing as should be best calculated to win the good word and good opinion of every body. For this purpose he has laboured, with a skill and success surpassing all previous example; and since to please all is to please persons of all political opinions, the precise degree of compromise conducive to this end, was very accurately calculated, and studiously employed. All the substantial advantage in point of opinion must, indeed, be given to the aristocracy, because they, being accustomed to entire subservience, can ill bear any thing which falls far short of it; while, on the other hand, even democrats and democratic principles must be treated with a certain appearance of respect, because, the object being to please every body, it will not do to make intemperate and offensive attacks either upon men or opinions in which any considerable section of the reading public take an interest. But the democrats, being accustomed to pure abuse, are tolerably well satisfied when they meet with a writer in whom the abuse is a little qualified; and their favour is sufficiently attained by keeping somewhat to the liberal side of high Tory opinions, and allowing a fair share of the common feelings and intellect of men, to persons who, by Tory writers in general, are considered as destitute of them, being addicted to the notion that the House of Commons should represent the people, and similar heterodoxies. By this mark, accordingly, Sir Walter Scott has guided himself; and has taken pains to be, on all occasions, a little more just towards the friends of the people than is usual with their enemies. His Old Mortality is a miserable travestie of the Scottish Covenanters, compared with Laing’s History, or Mr. Galt’s Ringan Gilhaize;[*] and so is his View of the French Revolution, compared with Mignet or Bailleul.[†] But a bigotted Tory can scarcely read either work without some mitigation of his prejudices. Sir Walter Scott is not the man from whom it could be expected that he should be an unbiassed judge between the aristocracy and the people; but considering him as the advocate of the aristocracy against the people, he is not altogether an illiberal or disingenuous one.

The work may be appropriately divided into two parts; the History of the French Revolution, and that of the Reign of Napoleon Bonaparte. This is somewhat more than a merely chronological division. The two subjects are as unlike as those of the Iliad and of the Odyssey; though, like these, they form a portion of the same series of events, and concern in part the same persons. The former period seems to contain nothing but what is extraordinary; the latter, hardly any thing but what is common-place. The reign of Napoleon affords little or nothing to the historian, Edition: current; Page: [58] except ordinary characters and ordinary events. The career which he ran, had been trodden times out of number by successful adventurers; there have never been wanting just such men as he, when such prizes have been attainable by them: the most obvious causes suffice to account for every event in his history: to comprehend it thoroughly, there needed no extraordinary depth of philosophy; the lowest impulses of the lowest description of human beings are the moving principle of the whole, and few men know and understand less of these than they ought. Where one man is the sole disposer of events, history is easily written: it is only to study the character of that one man: if this be vulgar, all is vulgar; if it be peculiar, he who has seized its peculiarities has the key to all which may appear remarkable in the events of the period. The lines of Napoleon’s character are few, and strongly marked: to trace them correctly, far inferior powers to those of Sir Walter Scott would have been sufficient. And if his story be inaccurate, as we have no doubt that it is, in many of the details, those details are of such sovereign unimportance for any purpose of utility or instruction, that we, for our share, should have little objection, provided they be amusing, to dispense altogether with their being true.

To write the history of the French Revolution was a task requiring far other powers, involving far other difficulties. To say that, on no occasion, did surprising events succeed one another with such breathless rapidity, that never were effects so extraordinary produced by such a complication of causes, nor in so short a space of time, would be to form a very inadequate idea of the peculiarities of that momentous period, considered as a theme for history. It was marked by a characteristic still more embarrassing to such men as those by whom history is commonly written. The moving forces in this vast convulsion, the springs by which so much complex machinery was now set in motion, now stopt, now swept away, were of a class for the laws of whose action the dictionary of historical common-places does not yet afford one established formula—a class which the routine-historian has not yet been taught by familiarity to fancy that he understands. Heretofore, when a change of government had been effected by force in an extensive and populous country, the revolution had been made always by, and commonly for, a few: the French Revolution was emphatically the work of the people. Commenced by the people, carried on by the people, defended by the people with a heroism and self-devotion unexampled in any other period of modern history, at length terminated by the people when they awoke from the frenzy into which the dogged resistance of the privileged classes against the introduction of any form whatever of representative government, had driven them; the French Revolution will never be more than superficially understood, by the man who is but superficially acquainted with the nature and movements of popular enthusiasm. That mighty power, of which, but for the French Revolution, mankind perhaps would never have known the surpassing strength—that force which converts a whole people into heroes, which binds an entire nation together Edition: current; Page: [59] as one man, was able, not merely to overpower all other forces, but to draw them into its own line, and convert them into auxiliaries to itself. The vulgar politician finds to his confusion (if indeed it is in the power of any vulgar politician to make the discovery), that all the causes which he is in the habit of calling in upon other occasions to account for every thing in history which perplexes him, are powerless here; that party interests, and class interests, and personal interests, and individual depravity, and individual virtue, and even the highest endowments of individual intellect and genius, appear to influence the train of events only when they fall in with it, and add force to the current, which, as often as they are thrown into opposition with it, they are found inadequate to withstand. The rules by which such a period is to be judged of, must not be common rules: generalizations drawn from the events of ordinary times, fail here of affording even that specious appearance of explanation, which is the utmost that such empirical philosophy can ever accomplish. The man who is yet to come, the philosophical historian of the French Revolution, will leave these solemn plausibilities far behind, and will draw his philosophy from the primaeval fountain of human nature itself. Whatever else he may derive from what are called the records of past times, a lesson which he will not learn from them is, what is meant by a people; or from what causes, and in obedience to what laws, the thing, which that name expresses, is accustomed to act, on those rare occasions on which the opportunity of acting is allowed to it, and it is quite possible to be a tolerable poet, and much more than a tolerable novelist, without being able to rise to the comprehension of that one idea, or to know more of those laws and those principles than a child in the cradle.

We have stated but a part of the inherent difficulties of the subject. That the very facts of the French Revolution, from the multitude of conflicting testimonies, are incapable of being elicited but by one who possesses all the endowments of the most sagacious and practised judge, is still but a part, perhaps not the greatest part, of those difficulties. Suppose the facts ascertained—to interpret and account for them would demand, along with the most minute knowledge of the circumstances of France and of the French people for centuries back, a mind profoundly conversant with human nature under all the modifications superinduced by acting upon the extensive theatre of a whole nation; and the deepest insight into the springs of human society, into the causes by the perpetual and often unseen agency of which, a nation is made to be what it is, in respect to civilization, morals, modes of thinking, physical condition, and social relations. Nor is this all. To judge of the French Revolution, is to judge statesmen, and the acts of statesmen, in novel and critical situations. It is to form an estimate of great changes in the government and institutions of a country; of new laws established, of old ones overthrown, and of the manner in which the helm of government was conducted through a course beset with perils and difficulties more trying, perhaps, than were ever before experienced by a great and powerful nation. It is not too much to expect, that the writer, whose judgment is to guide that of his readers in such high concerns, shall Edition: current; Page: [60] himself know as much as philosophy and experience can teach, of the science of government and legislation: that he shall be well skilled both in the theory and in the practice of politics; shall know at the same time what is best in itself, and how to make allowance for the obstacles and counteracting forces, which often render what is not best in itself, necessary either as a precaution or as a compromise.

To this rare combination of qualities, Sir Walter Scott has no claim. In political and social philosophy his principles are all summed up in the orthodox one, that whatever is English is best; best, not for England only, but for every country in Christendom, or probably the world. By starting from this point it must be acknowledged that much trouble is saved, and not a little of what is apt to be thought the duty of a historian, very comfortably abridged. To a mind properly imbued with this axiom, to sit in judgment upon the statesmen or institutions of other countries is an easy task. To inquire patiently into the suitableness of a system of government to the nature of man in general, or to the circumstances of any nation in particular; to examine how far it did or did not provide for the exigencies of that nation; to take account of the degree in which its framers might expect that causes peculiar to that nation would promote, modify, or impede, its action; and, if it be pronounced bad, to consider what means they had by whom it was adopted, of establishing any thing better; all this, to a person of such enlarged views, is unnecessary labour. Sir Walter Scott settles all these questions in a moment, by a summary appeal to that ever-ready standard of comparison, English practice. Whatever he finds here established, or whatever bears the same name with any thing which is here established, is excellent, and if the statesmen of France, unfortunately for themselves, not judging of things by the same comprehensive rule, formed a different opinion, the folly thus evinced accounts for all the subsequent misfortunes of their country. Should an institution happen not to be English, it is condemned: and here something more of thought is required in making out a case against it, though not much; for nobody is ignorant how ridiculously easy it is to find inconveniences and dangers on one side of every political question, sufficient to decide it, if we only take care to keep our eyes well shut to the inconveniences and dangers on the other. Although, too, no other reasons for condemnation should be discoverable, there is one argument against all systems that are not English, which can never be wanting; they are untried theories: no free institutions except ours, according to our author, having ever had the sanction of experience; for it never occurs to him that the principle of an institution may have been tried successfully any number of times, although the exact model may be to be found nowhere.

While Sir Walter Scott’s acquirements are of this mean description, in the science of politics, and the philosophy of the social union, he is almost equally deficient in that acquaintance with facts, without which the most philosophical statesman is no better qualified to judge what is fittest for a nation, than the most profound physician to prescribe what is fittest for a patient whom he has not seen. There is no proof, in this work of Sir Walter Scott, that he has taken the trouble to Edition: current; Page: [61] make himself well acquainted with the state of France at the time when the Revolution broke out; with the physical condition and mental peculiarities of the people, the habitual feelings and modes of thinking of the different classes of society, and the working of the great machine of government in the detail. Not only is there no proof that he has made himself well acquainted with these circumstances, but there is conclusive proof that he has not made himself acquainted with them at all; that he has scarcely so much as adverted to them as being among the things which it is necessary for a historian of the Revolution to know; and has therefore committed all the mistakes that are incident to a historian who is thoroughly unacquainted with the spirit of the times which he is describing. His complete ignorance of the position in which individuals and parties were placed, leads him regularly to ascribe their actions to other than the true causes. He blames men who did the best they could, for not doing better; treats men who had only a choice of inconveniences, as if they were the masters of events, and could regulate them as they pleased; reproaches men who were beset by dangers on both sides, because they did not, to avoid the dangers on one side, precipitate themselves into those on the other; goes to search for discreditable motives at an immense distance, when the most creditable ones were obviously afforded by the state of affairs; and judges of the conduct of men in the crisis of a revolution, by the same standard which he would have applied to persons securely in possession of the governing power in peaceable times.

Such and no higher being the qualifications which Sir Walter Scott brings to the task of making an estimate, moral and philosophical, of the French Revolution; the reader may judge what is the value of his opinions on the subject, and how well the conception which his book conveys of the Revolution resembles its real character. The work has, in addition to these, all the defects of a book hastily written: it is utterly without research. The author has been satisfied with resorting to the most hackneyed and obvious authorities: he has read perhaps one or two of the professed histories of the period; some of the more popular of the memoirs he has consulted, but we find it difficult to believe that he has read them: he has left but few references at the bottom of the page to betray to the public in general the superficiality of his reading, but, that some even of these few are made from memory, is demonstrated by his referring, for proof of an assertion, to the very passage which proves the assertion to be false.* The documents which breathe the Edition: current; Page: [62] living spirit of the time, the only monuments of really cotemporary history, (which is the most different thing imaginable from history written by cotemporaries, after they have undergone a thousand changes of opinion and feeling, and when the genuine impression of the present events has faded from their recollection) are the decrees of the national assemblies, the speeches of their members, the papers laid before them, and the immensely numerous books, pamphlets, and periodicals, of the day. These genuine authorities, as neither fame nor profit was to be got by consulting them, our author had not thought it necessary to consult. We doubt whether he has given, to more than two or three of them, even the most cursory perusal.

It may be thought surprising, that a book should be offered to the public, by so distinguished a writer, as the history of so recent and so universally interesting a period, in which so little pains have been taken to ensure that which, all other qualities being put out of the question, is at any rate a sine quâ non of history, namely, truth. But our author enjoyed two advantages, either of which would have made it safe for him to deviate from the truth even more widely than he has: he wrote for readers thoroughly ignorant of the subject, and for readers the whole of whose prepossessions were more or less strongly on his side. For being ignorant of the subject, some of his readers have the excuse, that to this very hour there does not exist one tolerable account of this remarkable portion of history, in the English tongue. But the number of Englishmen to whom works written in the French language are accessible, is now so great, that the marvellous extent of their ignorance respecting the French Revolution, must be regarded as a proof, that this reading nation chuses to read dissertations on Aeolic Digammas, or Iron Masks,[*] or any other matter of frivolous and idle curiosity, sooner than any thing which will furnish them with evidence upon matters on which their minds have been made up without it. For ignorance has not here had the effect which conscious ignorance in a well-regulated mind ought to have, that of preventing them from forming any opinion. Acted upon as their ignorance has been, from day to day and from year to year, by the torrents of unmeasured and undiscriminating invective which have been poured forth against the Revolution, by men who knew nearly as little about it as the public themselves, but who knew perfectly what mode of treating the subject Edition: current; Page: [63] would be acceptable to those on whom the reputation and the sale of their lucubrations depended; a feeling has been generated, which predisposes men to credit upon any evidence or no evidence, any assertion with respect to the French Revolution or revolutionists, provided only it be sufficiently unfavourable: and he who would seek to refute even the most extravagant of these assertions, finds it difficult to obtain a hearing, and scarcely possible to persuade.

It cannot, however, be deemed of small importance to the best interests of mankind, that the opinions which they form on such a subject as the French Revolution, should be correct opinions. So long as all who hold the lot of mankind to be capable of any material improvement, or conceive that any good can be accomplished by taking the powers of government out of the hands of those who are interested in abusing them, are deemed to be sufficiently answered by pointing to the calamitous issue of that great experiment; so long it will be a duty not to suffer that its history should be rendered the fitter to form the groundwork of these decisive conclusions, by being falsified and garbled. It is not in such an article as the present, that we can pretend to sketch the true history or trace the character of the French Revolution. But we can at least shew that Sir Walter Scott is not to be trusted; which we the more willingly do, as, in refuting his misrepresentations, we are exposing à fortiori those of the crowd of hirelings, who with inferior abilities, but with the same purposes, daily essay to fling each his minute and separate portion of dirt upon some of the noblest deeds and brightest characters in history. Such men are not important enough for any other chastisement than they may indirectly suffer, from the blow aimed at a more formidable enemy, and we shall mention them no further in this notice.

The work opens with a sketch of the state of France before the Revolution, and a view of the remote causes of that catastrophe. The whole of this is comprehended in two chapters, which consist of seventy-nine pages: a shorter space, therefore, than is frequently taken up by the dull introductions of our author’s novels, is all that he allows for what ought to be the quintessence of the internal history of France during more than a century. To have executed this portion of his task well, would of itself have required more reading and research than he has given to the entire work. It is almost unnecessary to say, therefore, that he has performed it ill, and has not only failed to communicate full and accurate knowledge, but has betrayed the lamentable extent of his own ignorance. This is the more to be regretted, as he has stated the little which he knows, with considerable force, and very tolerable fairness. The influence of such an aristocracy as that of France upon the national literature, is powerfully delineated; the character of the noblesse and clergy, during the fifty years preceding the Revolution, is traced with an indulgent, but with no feeble hand: and the exclusion of the tiers-état, that is, of almost the whole of the talent, and much the greater part of the opulence, of France, from all employment or influence in the affairs of the state, is deservedly reprobated. Our author, however, shares the vulgar error, which considers this monopoly of office Edition: current; Page: [64] as the principal, and almost the sole, cause of the Revolution: at least we may gather as much from the fulness with which he developes and expatiates upon it, while all the other causes are lumped together in a short and passing notice. This is by no means a trifling error; on the contrary, few can be named, which have contributed more to prevent the Revolution from being understood, or to lend an apparent sanction to the conclusions which aristocratic logic has drawn from it for aristocratic purposes. We dwell not upon the gross injustice towards the eminent men who originally took the lead in the Revolution, and whom this theory represents as ambitious spirits, struggling for no higher object than the removal of their personal disabilities, instead of patriots striving to free their country from a yoke which weighed it down to the earth. We shall not insist upon this, characteristic though it be—for thus it is that our author always contrives to disguise or throw into the shade whatever is exalted in purpose or generous in sentiment, in those whose principles he disapproves, while he gives credit to the royalists for the most chivalrous disinterestedness and honour, not only without evidence, but in direct contradiction to the testimony of the better members of their own body. But (to say no more upon this point) mark the implied imputation upon the French people, which this theory of the Revolution conveys. If the excesses of the Revolution had no greater provocation than our author tells us of, what must not we think of them? Slur over the fact that every man’s liberty was at the mercy of every minister or clerk of a minister, or lacquey of a minister, or mistress of a lacquey of a minister—that every man’s property was at the mercy of intendants and subdélégués, and the whole fry of agents and sub-agents in one of the most odious systems of fiscal tyranny ever known; sink all this, and a hundred things besides, and fix upon non-admissibility to office as the great practical grievance of the tiers-état, and what is the inference? For our author certainly will not succeed in persuading anybody, that it was the ineligibility of the merchants and avocats of Paris and Bordeaux to public offices, and of their sons to promotion in the army, which caused the peasants of several of the provinces of France to rise in arms and burn the houses of their seigneurs:[*] the provocations, therefore, which are assigned, being obviously insufficient, and the real ones having been carelessly overlooked or purposely passed over, the only explanation which seems to offer itself is the perversity of the people: of whose supposed readiness at all times, unless kept down by terror, to rise against their superiors and make war upon person and property, another example is thus manufactured.

Sir Walter Scott may be well assured that the grievances which could excite in the peasantry feelings of such bitter hatred towards the privileged classes, were grievances which affected themselves, and not other people. The Roman tribune understood the nature of the people much better, when he reproached them with being abundantly eager and zealous when their efforts were required to prevent the Edition: current; Page: [65] usurpation of their lands, or protect their persons from the rapacity and cruelty of their creditors, but deaf to the call of their leaders when there was nothing to contend for except the privilege of rewarding those leaders with offices and honours.[*] The feelings of the people are not wont to be excited by an abstract principle. It is not a distant or a contingent evil which works upon them. The tyranny which excites them to resistance must be felt, not conceived; they must discover it by their sensations, not by their reason. The abuses which they resent, are those which bear upon their direct interests; which “come home to their business and bosoms.”[†] Never yet did a people hate their superiors, but for some real or imagined wrong; never were they stimulated to such outrages as those which signalized the breaking out of the French Revolution, except by the intolerable pressure of active, grinding oppression. And in no country, pretending to civilization, had the peasantry been so borne down by oppression as in France. “Les jeunes gens et les étrangers,” says Madame de Staël.

Our author himself observes, that in La Vendée alone had the privileged classes done their duty towards the cultivators of the soil, and that in La Vendée alone was any stand made by those cultivators in their defence.[‡] This observation is an approach to the true theory of the causes of the Revolution, and is conceived in a spirit of which it were to be wished that there were more frequent examples in these volumes. Indications of such a spirit are indeed not rare in his occasional remarks; in which respect he resembles many other writers, who have falsified history in the gross, as thoroughly as himself. He is far too acute not to see a part of the truth; far too slightly acquainted with the monuments of the times, to have the faintest or most distant perception of it as a whole. We may perhaps take some future opportunity of making known to our readers, what substantial reasons the peasants had for detesting both the government and their seigneurs. In the meantime, we Edition: current; Page: [66] shall do no more than refer them to a book which is in every man’s hands. If, in place of his first two chapters, Sir Walter Scott had merely reprinted the concluding dissertation in the first volume of Arthur Young’s excellent work on France,[*] he would have done more to convey a just idea of the causes of the French Revolution than will be done by twenty such productions as his “Preliminary View.” We believe, that most men who have read that dissertation, will exclaim with its author, who had himself seen and heard all he describes—that no man of common sense and feeling can lament the fall of such a government, or look with any but a mitigated severity upon the terrible retribution which an oppressed people exacted from their tyrants the moment they were free.

Among the causes which most powerfully promoted, or at least directed, the tendency to change, our author justly assigns a high rank to the increased influence of literature. And here we may be sure that the opportunity is eagerly seized, of recommending himself to our moral public, by an invective against the French philosophers, as they are termed; principally upon the two points of licentiousness and irreligion. In the course of this diatribe, our author manifests no very accurate knowledge of the writings or lives of these objects of his somewhat undiscriminating dislike. As for fairness, it would be too much to expect it from such a writer on such a subject; and accordingly we are not surprised to find the immense benefits which the philosophers conferred upon their country and mankind, altogether overlooked, while whatever either is, or can be made to appear, objectionable in them or in their works, is grossly exaggerated. Thus, they are gravely stated to have been engaged in a sort of “anti-crusade,” not only against Christianity, but against “religious principles of every kind;”[†] a description which, if applicable at all, can apply only to one or two of them, and those neither the ablest nor the most influential, perhaps to one only, and him not a Frenchman, the Baron d’Holbach; while on the other hand, how large a portion of the writings of Rousseau, and especially of Voltaire, is taken up in maintaining and enforcing the being and attributes of God, is known to every one who has read them. The ancient fiction of a “league,” a “conspiracy,”[‡] is revived; when it is notorious, that the supposed heads of this conspiracy, Voltaire and Rousseau, were at open war with each other, that Condorcet, in like manner, did not disguise his contempt for Mably,[§] that Turgot wrote against Helvétius,[¶] while equal dissensions and differences of opinion existed among the less distingished thinkers and writers of Edition: current; Page: [67] the class; and that nothing like an organized system of concert or co-operation ever existed among any portion of their number. Our author can know little of French literary history, or he would not talk of the close union and alliance which existed among the philosophers, “and more especially the Encyclopedists”[*]—we presume, between Diderot and d’Alembert—for of these two individuals only was this formidable corps, whose name has so long resounded from every corner of Europe, composed; they having written (with scarcely any exception but that of a small number of articles by Voltaire) the whole of the moral, theological, and metaphysical part of the Encyclopédie;[†] and it is worthy of remark, that of this pair of conspirators against religion, d’Alembert never published a single line against it. With respect to licentiousness, our author forgets that what was the vice of their age and of the society in which they moved, cannot with justice be laid at their door; it was not they who made French society what it was; on the contrary, it was through the influence principally of their writings, that it ever became any thing else. It is high time that Sir Walter Scott should be told, if he has not yet found it out, that licentiousness was a quality with which what are termed the philosophers were not more, but, on the contrary, less chargeable, than most writers of their day; that none of the authors peculiarly remarkable for it were to be found in their ranks, while several of those most distinguished by it (among whom it is sufficient to name Piron) were no less characterized by a bitter hostility against the persons and principles of the philosophers: that the virtues most opposite to licentiousness, found in Rousseau, if not always a consistent, at least an enthusiastic, advocate, and that many of the most distinguished among the philosophical writers, as Condillac, Condorcet, and above all, Turgot, were pure on this point, some of them to a degree of scrupulosity. However, it must be admitted, that several of the writers whom our author mentions, have produced works in some degree deserving the character which he assigns to them. Most certainly we do not quarrel with him for expressing his disapprobation of these writings: he should remember, however, that there ought to be bounds even to the most merited censure, and that there is still an immense distance between any licentiousness of which they can be accused, and that libertinism, which he justly characterizes as inconsistent with manly and virtuous patriotism. Because the ideas prevalent in a country allow a certain latitude of speaking, or even of acting, with respect to the branch of morality here concerned, it does not follow that all who in any degree avail themselves of this licence must therefore make the pursuit of sensual gratifications the business of their lives. Such an occupation, like the Edition: current; Page: [68] inordinate pursuit of every other merely individual enjoyment, is incapable of co-existing with any nobler aspirations, and if it does not begin, is sure to terminate, in utter selfishness; but it is false that voluptuousness, in this sense of the word, was, or is, more prevalent in France than in any other nation; and most especially is it false that any portion of the philosophers, either in their own lives, or in the doctrines and principles they inculcated, are chargeable with it.*

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Our author does not, like others of the alarmists, represent the philosophers, with the “licence and infidelity”[*] which they promoted, as the sole causes of, and movers in, the Revolution. He owns that a great political change would have been needed, and would have taken place,

had the French court and her higher orders retained the simple and virtuous manners of Sparta, united with the strong and pure faith of primitive Christians. The difference lay in this, that a simple, virtuous, and religious people, would have rested content with such changes and alterations in the constitution of their government as might remove the evils of which they had just and pressing reason to complain. They would have endeavoured to redress obvious and practical errors in the body politic, without being led into extremes, either by the love of realizing visionary theories, the vanity of enforcing their own particular philosophical or political doctrines, or the selfish arguments of demagogues, who, in the prospect of bettering their own situation by wealth, or obtaining scope for their ambition, aspired, in the words of the dramatic poet, to throw the elements of society into confusion, and thus

Now, inasmuch as the most moral and religious people that ever existed, the English of the reign of Charles I, carried their “changes and alterations” so far as to abolish monarchy and cut off the king’s head, we see that our author’s ideas of avoiding “extremes” and redressing “obvious and practical errors,” are of a tolerably radical extent.

It well becomes him to rail at theorists, who can overlook such a fact because it interferes with his theory. But it is ever thus with those who style themselves par excellence the men of practice and experience.

Our author takes a juster view of the causes which produced the errors of the Revolution, in the following acute and original remarks on the state of infancy in which the public mind had been kept by the restraints on the press.

An essay on the French monarchy, showing by what means the existing institutions might have been brought more into union with the wishes and wants of the people, must have procured for its author a place in the Bastille, and yet subsequent events have shown, that a system which might have introduced prudently and gradually into the decayed frame of the French government the spirit of liberty, which was originally inherent in every feudal monarchy, would have been the most valuable present which political wisdom could have Edition: current; Page: [70] rendered to the country. The bonds which pressed so heavily on the subject might thus have been gradually slackened, and at length totally removed, without the perilous expedient of casting them all loose at once. But the philosophers, who had certainly talent sufficient for the purpose, were not permitted to apply to the state of the French government the original principles on which it was founded, or to trace the manner in which usurpations and abuses had taken place, and propose a mode, by which, without varying its form, those encroachments might be restrained, and those abuses corrected. An author was indeed at liberty to speculate at any length upon general doctrines of government; he might imagine to himself an Utopia or Atalantis, and argue upon abstract ideas of the rights in which government originates; but on no account was he permitted to render any of his lucubrations practically useful, by adapting them to the municipal regulations of France. The political sage was placed with regard to his country, in the condition of a physician prescribing for the favourite sultana of some jealous despot, whom he is required to cure without seeing his patient, and without obtaining any accurate knowledge of her malady, its symptoms, and its progress. In this manner the theory of government was kept studiously separated from the practice. The political philosopher might, if he pleased, speculate upon the former, but he was prohibited, under severe personal penalties, to illustrate the subject by any allusions to the latter. Thus, the eloquent and profound work of Montesquieu[*] professed, indeed, to explain the general rights of the people, and the principles on which government itself rested, but his pages shew no mode by which these could be resorted to for the reformation of the constitution of his country. He laid before the patient a medical treatise on disease in general, instead of a special prescription, applying to his peculiar habits and distemper.

In consequence of these unhappy restrictions upon open and manly political discussion, the French government in its actual state was never represented as capable of either improvement or regeneration; and while general and abstract doctrines of original freedom were everywhere the subject of eulogy, it was never considered for a moment in what manner these new and more liberal principles could be applied to the improvement of the existing system. The natural conclusion must have been, that the monarchical government in France was either perfection in itself, and consequently stood in need of no reformation, or that it was so utterly inconsistent with the liberties of the people as to be susceptible of none. No one was hardy enough to claim for it the former character, and least of all those who presided in its councils, and seemed to acknowledge the imperfection of the system by prohibiting all discussion on the subject. It seemed, therefore, to follow, as no unfair inference, that to obtain the advantages, which the new elementary doctrines held forth, and which were so desirable and so much desired, a total abolition of the existing government to its very foundation, was an indispensable preliminary; and there is little doubt that this opinion prevailed so generally at the time of the Revolution, as to prevent any firm or resolute stand being made in defence even of such of the actual institutions of France as might have been amalgamated with the proposed reform.*

This is well thought, and well expressed; and the illustration which concludes the first paragraph, has a merit which our author’s figurative illustrations do not always possess; it really illustrates.

The reign of Louis XVI previous to the Revolution, is sketched in our author’s usual lively manner; the character of that well-meaning, but weak and vacillating prince, is justly estimated, and the series of blunders by which the court not only Edition: current; Page: [71] precipitated the crisis, but threw away the chances of giving it a direction favourable to themselves, are tolerably exposed.[*] But what our author sees and condemns in these proceedings is their weakness only, not their wickedness. The frantic struggles of enraged despotism to put down by force that rising spirit of liberty, which it already hated and feared with as much intensity as now after twenty years of exile—these are to be mildly censured, not for the atrocity of the end, but for the inefficacy of the means, and because the conspirators, being as imbecile as they were base, had the awkwardness to endanger their precious persons and privileges by the consequences of failure. A government, beggared by its profligate expenditure, exhausts every illegal resource, and tries all that can be done by the most desperate and tyrannical expedients to extort money from the people without giving them in return those constitutional reforms to which they were entitled; and this conduct appears to our author highly blameable, because it was bad policy, and rendered the crown “odious and contemptible.”[†] A government does its utmost to tread out the few sparks which centuries had not extinguished of freedom and constitutional control—it does this not so much as a year before the assembly is convened, which is destined to give to France a representative constitution; and this our author condemns—why? Because it excites “national discontent!”[‡] So liberal and indulgent is Sir Walter Scott towards the royalists: but his liberality and indulgence stop there. When every violence which tyranny prompted and fear would permit, has been tried in vain, this government at length has recourse to the people, and condescends to ask for what it has at last found that it no longer has power to seize: the National Assembly meets, and by means of a temporary popular enthusiasm, wrings from the government ten times as many of its unjust privileges, as the parliaments had ever dreamed of questioning; it adds, by its reforms, the parliaments themselves, and the whole of the privileged classes, to the number of its enemies;—and now, if the Assembly is not so silly as to suppose that the power of misrule has been resigned willingly, if it harbours even a suspicion that the fate of the parliaments is in reserve for it, or takes the commonest precaution to secure itself against the hostility of the court, and of the numerous and powerful classes whom it has offended,—not only its conduct is disapproved of, but its motives are misconstrued, and its whole system of action tortured and perverted. “Et voilà justement comme on écrit l’histoire.”*

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There is something amusing in the naïveté with which our author lays it down, that the elections ought to have been tampered with, to obtain returns favourable to the court; evidently without the slightest suspicion that a course so perfectly according to the English model, can deserve or incur the disapprobation of any body. He says, with equal gravity, that the public mind ought to have been Edition: current; Page: [73] preoccupied with arguments of a sound and virtuous tendency. This is extremely fine; but by whom preoccupied? By the court and aristocracy of France? “Sound and virtuous”[*] arguments from such a quarter would indeed have been something new. By Necker? Does our author suppose that he could have retained his office for an hour, if he had attempted to promulgate among the people, either in his ministerial or in his private capacity, ideas of rational freedom? Necker shewed himself, on more than one occasion during the Revolution, unequal to the Edition: current; Page: [74] great difficulties of his very trying situation; but a writer who can so little appreciate those difficulties is scarcely entitled to sit in judgment on him, and affect to point out by what means he might have been more successful.

There was a reason, more than Sir Walter Scott dreams of, for doing nothing to gain over the tiers-état to the court. Nobody doubted that they would be on the side of the court, without prompting. It was not from the commons, but from the privileged orders, that all resistance to the will of the monarch had previously come; it was they who, when called upon for the sacrifice of their pecuniary immunities, had demanded the convocation of the Etats Généraux to sustain them in their refusal. The commons, it was well known, were, and with good reason, inveterately hostile to the privileged orders, but they neither were, nor did any one suppose them to be, disaffected to the king; on the contrary, the privileged classes openly proclaimed that the tiers-état would be, as it had ever been, in favour of the king, and against liberty, that is, against aristocratical ascendancy. Accordingly the court party took no trouble to gain the tiers-état, while, on the contrary, every man and even every woman about the palace was assiduously engaged in paying court to the deputies of the noblesse, from whom alone any resistance was apprehended; and succeeded in gaining those who had taken the lead in the previous resistance, d’Epréménil and d’Antraigues.*

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That chivalrous loyalty, therefore, which Sir Walter Scott admires in the noblesse, only commenced when they discovered that other persons than themselves were about to gain the ascendancy in the Etats Généraux, and that the engine which they had constructed in hopes to wield it against the royal authority, was wrested from them and turned against themselves, by that people whom they had scorned. Then, they were extremely willing to make a parade of their loyalty; as some of them who had never before mentioned the name of God but in mockery, became patterns of devotion from the moment when they had hopes that the yell of fanaticism might serve them to incite the country-people against the Assembly.* Then they were ready to die for that king, whom many of them had ridiculed and lampooned; that queen, whose character they had been the first to vilify;† and that despotism, against which, for their own purposes, they had struck the first blow.‡ Yet, amid all this pretence, still true to their character, they thought merely of their own privileges, and not for one instant of his safety whom they professed to serve. The majority fled to the courts of other despots, there to stir up foreign enemies, to make war upon their country in the name of their king: that king being all the time, as they studiously gave out, a captive in the hands of the very men whom they thus irritated to frenzy. Those who remained proclaimed everywhere the king’s insincerity, made his name a pretext for all their liberticide intrigues, and leagued themselves with the worst of the Jacobins to promote every measure which they Edition: current; Page: [76] thought calculated to raise the disorder to its height, in order to ruin those whom they hated bitterest of all, the partisans of an orderly and well-regulated liberty.*

We have now arrived at the opening of the Revolution itself; and from this point we can no longer give to our author’s attempt at history, even that qualified praise which we have bestowed upon the introductory chapters. From this point it conveys none but false impressions: it is a story skilfully, and even artfully constructed for a purpose. We have no intention of imputing insincerity to Sir Walter Scott. Though he obviously attempts throughout to impress the reader with a certain view of the facts, he probably is himself persuaded that this view is the true one. But that important branch of the talent of the narrator, which Sir Walter Scott in his character of a romancer pre-eminently possesses, the art of so relating every incident that it shall strike the reader not as an isolated incident, but as a part of the train of events,—of keeping the whole posture of affairs, such as it is supposed to be in the story, constantly present to the reader’s conception, and almost to his sight—is a talent most delightful in a novelist, most dangerous when the subject is real history, and the author’s view of the posture of affairs happens to be wrong. It is nothing less than the art of so dressing up a fact, as to make it appear to mean more than it does; of so relating and arranging the events to be related, as to make them tell a different story from what would be implied in the mere chronological recital of them. We are far from maintaining that this mode of relating facts is always blameable. We by no means affirm that an historian should be required to state first the naked facts, without any admixture of inference, and then speculate upon causes, motives, and characters, if he pleases. It would often be impossible to find room for all the facts, upon which inferences of this sort may very properly have been founded; and such part of the facts as are related, when the nature of the case does not permit the introduction of the whole, may justifiably be coloured, that is, although not sufficient in themselves to prove the theory, may be so related as to suggest it, if the theory be true, and evidence to prove it be produceable on fit occasions. Our quarrel with Sir Walter Scott is, that his theory is not true: that his view of the rationale of the French Revolution is not capable of being proved, but capable, on the contrary, of being disproved by the most cogent Edition: current; Page: [77] evidence. And if this be so, it undoubtedly is a great additional evil, that what cannot be proved is insinuated almost in every sentence; that the language in which the events are related, invariably implies a particular mode of accounting for them; that every separate fact as it arises, finds the reader artificially prepared to put that interpretation upon it which the author’s system requires; that causes are feigned, and the events so managed as to appear the natural consequences of them; that the hypothesis is slid in and gains credence under cover of the facts, because they are so related as seemingly not to allow of any other explanation.

During the Revolution, a variety of shades of opinion manifested themselves, and a variety of distinct and hostile parties grew up, among the defenders of the popular cause. The vulgar mouth-pieces of aristocracy to whom in our own country the office of forming the public sentiment on the Revolution was abandoned, have generally lumped all these parties and opinions together, in order that all of them, and the Revolution itself, might share the opprobrium which is justly due to the terrorists alone. Sir Walter Scott is quite superior to these low artifices: but he has fallen into an error as gross, and far more plausible. He has committed the very common blunder of ascribing to persons what was the effect of circumstances, and to settled design what was the result of immediate impulse. Every one of his characters has a part premeditated and prepared, and is ready to march upon the stage and enact it at the precise moment when his entrée will produce the most striking scenic effect. All the parties which gradually arose during the Revolution are represented as already existing from its commencement. At the very opening of the drama, we have already Constitutionalists, Republicans, and Jacobins, all of whom are described as even then entertaining all the opinions, and prosecuting systematically all the designs, which they manifested when they were most conspicuous, and most powerful. The struggle between the people and the court is made to appear, in all its stages, to have arisen solely from the endeavours of these different parties to carry their supposed designs into effect: the events are, with much skill, so presented as on every occasion to make the revolutionists appear the aggressors; they are pictured as omnipotent, having nothing to fear, nothing, for any good purpose, to desire; while the court and the aristocracy are represented from the first in no character but that of helpless unresisting victims, altogether without power even of self-defence, and quite impotent for attack. If any precaution, therefore, is taken, under the idea that any attack from that quarter is possible, it is held up as a studied indignity, intended to prepare the way for the subversion of the throne, and clear the ground for trying quackish political experiments, at the expense of a nation’s happiness.

Now there is not a word of all this but what is purely fabulous. There is not a truth in history more firmly established, than the non-existence of any republican party at the commencement of the Revolution. The wishes of all then centered in a constitutional monarchy. There may have been, and probably were, speculative philosophers, at that time as at most others, who preferred in the abstract a Edition: current; Page: [78] republican form of government; but, if such there were, they had not the remotest idea of introducing it into France; and it is not proved that at this early period so much as one member of the Constituent Assembly was even in this speculative sense a republican. If any were so, they were of the number of those whom Sir Walter Scott acknowledges to have been, in their conduct, supporters of monarchy.* The men who formed the extremity of the côté gauche, who were esteemed the most exagérés among the democrats, were Barnave, Duport, and the Lameths: yet all these, when at length there was a republican party, were its most determined opponents, and threw away safety, fortune, popularity, every thing which they most valued, to save the throne. One of the Lameths, even, on the subversion of monarchy, expatriated with La Fayette, and shared with him that memorable captivity which the brutal vengeance of an infuriated despot[*] inflicted, and in which the author of “New Morality,” in a spirit worthy of his sarcasm upon Ogden, found matter for savage exultation.[†]

The very name of a French republic was scarcely breathed, never publicly pronounced, until the king’s flight from Paris: when two years experience, terminated by that ill-fated attempt, had clearly proved the impossibility of trusting to his good faith, so long as all who surrounded him were inveterately hostile to the new order of things; when the experiment of a free constitution with him at its head, had decidedly failed, and all discerning persons saw the impossibility of arriving at a settled government, or maintaining the authority of the laws, while the executive authority was in hands which could not safely be intrusted with the power necessary to enforce them. It was not till after ample and melancholy experience of this fact, that some of those who afterwards composed the Girondist party became republicans; but even then, by the great majority of that party, nothing more was at first thought of than a change of monarch; and nothing more would have been thought of to the last, if the Duke of Orleans, the only member of the royal family who was not inveterately hostile to the popular cause, had been of a character to possess, or to deserve, the smallest portion of public respect.

It may surprise some readers to find that Sir Walter Scott makes no allusion to the Orleanist party, which used to be employed with so much effect, in the character of a bugbear, by the enemies of liberal principles in France. This party, which was supposed to comprise all the abler and more energetic of the adherents Edition: current; Page: [79] of the popular cause, was represented as compassing the king’s destruction as a means, and, as an end, the elevation of the Duke of Orleans either to the regency or to the throne, and of themselves to the principal offices of state. As it is unquestionable that Orleanists, if not an Orleanist party, did at one time exist, the discerning reader, when he finds that Sir Walter Scott is generous enough to forego all the advantages which the impugners of the popular leaders have derived from the connexion of several of them with that unhappy man, is apt to think that a writer with his partialities would hardly have been so unnecessarily candid on this point, without some ulterior object. Sir Walter Scott has sagacity enough to know, that different imputations suit different times, and that attacks upon visionary theorists take much better now, in this country at least, than accusations of aiming at personal aggrandizement under the mask of popular principles. This we suspect to be the true reason of his conjuring up a republican party, and putting aside not only what is fictitious, but what is true, in the denunciations of royalist writers against the Orleanists. For it is impossible that he should be ignorant (scanty and careless as his reading on the subject of the Revolution has been), that not Republicanism but Orleanism was the only reproach, connected with designs against the king, which was imputed at the time to any individual member of the Constituent Assembly: not Republicanism but Orleanism was the accusation brought against the only member of it, whom our author singles out by name as one of the republican party;* and, in fact, the only shade of opinion which existed in the Edition: current; Page: [80] Assembly beyond what our author terms the party of Bailly and La Fayette, was Orleanism. The difference between the Orleanists and the other section of the popular party did not consist in a greater hostility to royalty; for, on the contrary, their leader Mirabeau was inclined, as his speeches prove, to give a larger share of power to the king than even Necker himself, the largest indeed which was at all consistent with the circumstances of the time, or perhaps with constitutional freedom.[*] The distinction lay in this—that, while both parties desired a monarchical and representative government, La Fayette and the majority felt sufficient confidence in the good intentions of Louis, to be desirous of retaining him at its head, while the other party would have preferred his peaceable deposition, and the elevation of some individual to the constitutional throne, who had never known what it was to be a despot. All the more discerning among the friends of freedom, and especially Mirabeau, perhaps the only true statesman whom the Revolution produced, thoroughly distrusted the king. They knew, what in our times some other persons ought to have learned,—that it is next to an impossibility for a monarch, used to absolute power, to accommodate himself to limitations; and they were convinced that Louis, at least, was not the man who would be an exception to the rule. Incapable of maintaining and abiding by his firmest convictions, if they were in opposition to the will of those by whom he was immediately surrounded, he was formed to be the tool of any person who had the opportunity and the will to use him as such: completely at the beck of his queen and her counter-revolutionary counsellors, he had shewn by his conduct both before and immediately after the meeting of the Etats Généraux, that he was capable of being hurried into every extreme of despotism by such counsellors, although he personally did not share the passions in which their counsels originated: and the patriots thought, not without reason, that the man who, after saying that nobody except Turgot and himself desired the good of the people,[†] could dismiss this same Turgot a few months Edition: current; Page: [81] afterwards, at the persuasion of the very men of whose worthlessness he was so clearly convinced, was a man whose good feelings were no security against the worst conduct. Having this opinion of Louis, these statesmen, though fully aware of all the objections to the Duke of Orleans as a man, still thought, that owing the crown to the new order of things, and being unable to maintain it by any support but that of the friends of freedom, he would be less objectionable as the head of a constitutional monarchy, than a man who thought himself, and was thought by a powerful party, to be a despot by divine right. Our Revolution of 1688 formed at once a precedent for such a settlement of affairs, and an example of its beneficial effects. It is deeply to be regretted that uncontrollable circumstances prevented these views from being realized. As it turned out, the change of dynasty was only thought of for an instant, not by a party, but by scattered individuals, and thought of merely, like the republic at a later period, as a pis aller. The nullity of the Duke of Orleans as a politician, which became more clearly manifested by subsequent events, and the complete annihilation of the little character he possessed, detached from him all the more sincere and disinterested of his adherents; and when Louis had so acted that even Sir Walter Scott admits he ought not to have been replaced on the throne,[*] these and many others, being of the same opinion with Sir Walter Scott, became republicans because they had no choice.*

But it is not the republicans alone that have had the misfortune to offend our author: the constitutional royalists come in for nearly an equal share of his displeasure. Much good indignation, and no inconsiderable quantity of what is intended to be wit, is expended upon them, for rejecting the counsels of experience, and attempting to renovate the constitution of France by means of abstract and untried theories. It is with such vulgar weapons, that Sir Walter Scott does not disdain to assail some of the most remarkable men who have ever figured in public affairs. To point out the real faults in the conduct of the early revolutionists—to shew in what respects the means which they employed, were ill-suited to attain the ends which they had in view,—this, it is not every body who is capable of; but if to dub them theorists be sufficient, then there is not a creature so dull, so ignorant, so thoroughly mean in understanding and void of ideas, who is not perfectly competent to condemn philosophers and statesmen without a hearing, and decide at his ease all the questions which perplexed the most thinking Edition: current; Page: [82] men of their day. It seems no more than reasonable to demand, in behalf of conclusions which are the result of thought, that some portion of thought shall also be deemed necessary in order to criticize them; and that a body of men, who comprised in their ranks nearly all the political wisdom which could be found in an age and country abounding in it, shall at least be thought worthy of having their motives and reasons weighed, and of being condemned, if condemned they must be, for the injustice or inexpediency of their course of action, not for its novelty.

It cannot be denied that the early revolutionists did attempt to discover what was the best possible form of government; and, having, in their own opinion, found it, did endeavour to bring the government of their own country as nearly into accordance with it as they could. We shall not seek to defend them against these imputations; but, if our author’s objection to their scheme of government be that it was untried, we are entitled to require him to shew that there was any tried scheme, which would have afforded better prospects of success.

His opinion on the subject might have been foretold. It is, that they should have adopted the English constitution; or something as nearly resembling it as possible.

Now this, from a writer who is perpetually crying out against visionary projects, is a tolerable specimen of a visionary project; and its author is justly chargeable with the very fault which he imputes to the revolutionists, that of being so wedded to a favourite system, as to insist upon introducing it at all hazards, even when the very circumstances which constitute its excellence at other times, would infallibly work its destruction.

It is not on account of the imperfections of the British constitution, great as we deem these to be, on its native soil, that we blame those who, at this period of the Revolution, sought to introduce it into France. With all its defects, we are well content that foreign nations should look to it as their model; for there is little danger of their copying it in those parts which are the cause of our evils. It is not probable that they should fail of making their Lower House a real representative organ: and as we should be satisfied with this in our own country, so we are of opinion that in any other, the British constitution, with this modification alone, would suffice for good government.

But what may be very true of a settled order of things, it may be altogether absurd to affirm of a revolution. Why do the King and the House of Peers, in this country, never convert the powers which they constitutionally possess, to the overthrow of the constitution and the abolition of the House of Commons? Nobody supposes that it is because they would not; for it is the theory of our constitution, that every one who has power seeks its enlargement, and, in times more favourable to them, they have attempted such things. It is because they could not; and because, power to effect such schemes being manifestly wanting, the desire never arises in their minds. Nobody, however, will deny that it is in their power to impede and thwart in a hundred ways the operations of the Commons, and even to Edition: current; Page: [83] put a stop to the business of government altogether. They have, therefore, much power, capable of being mischievously employed. Our security against their so employing it is, that they could serve no purpose by doing so, except that of destroying the constitution; and, of success in such a design, they well know that they have no chance. Give them a chance, and you will soon know the mischief which they can still do. Let the time ever come, when by the exercise of their powers in a manner opposed to the end for which those powers were given, the king may hope to erect an absolute monarchy, or the peers to establish themselves in undivided rule as an aristocratical senate, and we are justified in saying that either their powers must be suspended, or the government cannot be carried on. Such was the posture of affairs during the French Revolution; and he who does not carry this conviction along with him through the whole of its history, will never form a rational conception of the Revolution in any of its stages, much less as a whole.

If the attempt to establish a government of two chambers on the English model, had been made, the Upper House must have been formed from among the high noblesse and clergy, either by the king’s choice, or by the suffrages of the privileged orders themselves. In whichever way selected, this second chamber would have been, as the high noblesse and the high clergy almost universally were, inveterately hostile to nearly every necessary reform, and (as soon as they saw that they were not about to have absolute control over the legislature) to the representative system itself. Not one of the great objects of the Revolution would, with their consent, have been effected; and either those objects must have been renounced, or it would have been necessary to decide which chamber should turn the other out of doors, or, what is most probable, the court would have taken advantage of their dissensions to discredit them in the public mind, and would have availed itself of the authority of one branch of the legislature to rid itself for ever of both. This is what stamps the conduct and counsels of Mounier (whom our author characterizes as one of the wisest men in France),[*] of Lally Tolendal, and the remainder of the modérés (or monarchiens, as they were afterwards called), with absurdity; and marks them as altogether unequal to the difficulties of the crisis which they had aided so powerfully in bringing on. That the intentions of these men were good, is not to be denied; but the good intentions of men, who not only give the most unseasonable and ruinous advice, but desert their post and abandon their country because that advice is not listened to, are of little use. The emigration of Mounier and Lally, at the time when, if ever, the presence of wise and moderate men was required, admits of but one excuse, and that is, the supposition that they were conscious of being deficient in all the qualities which could be available in Edition: current; Page: [84] troubled times, and felt that the moment was past when such men as they were, could act a part in the Revolution.*

Our author next pronounces that the Assembly erred, by not giving sufficient power to the king.[*] He gets over all the difficulties of this question very summarily. It was surely very foolish in the Assembly to waste so much time and labour in anxious deliberation on points which our author settles so perfectly at his ease. Nothing can be more conclusive than the case he can always make out against them; nothing more completely satisfactory than the reasons he gives, to prove them always in the wrong; and the chief impression which is made upon the reader, is one of astonishment, that a set of persons should have been found so perversely blind to considerations so obviously dictated by sound policy and common sense. But when we examine the original authorities, we find that these considerations were no more unknown or unheeded by the Assembly than by our author himself. The difference in point of knowledge between them and him consisted chiefly in this, that they likewise knew the reasons which made for the other side of the question, and might therefore be pardoned if, being thus burthened with arguments on both sides, they were slower to decide, and sometimes came to a different decision from that which, as long as we confine ourselves to one, appears so eminently reasonable.

The point which Sir Walter Scott so quietly disposes of was, in fact, the great difficulty of their situation. There is no denying, that the king, or whoever else is placed at the head of the executive, ought to have more power than the Constituent Assembly gave him. And most of the popular leaders felt this strongly enough; all, after a very short experience of the constitution they had framed. In truth, the executive had not power enough to enforce obedience to the laws, or to prevent, in many places, the most worthless part of the population, often headed and organized by professional robbers, from availing themselves of the universal relaxation of restraint, and perpetrating the most horrid enormities. The popular party knew all this; but they knew also, that every atom of power which they gave to the executive over the military, through whom alone these disorders could have been suppressed, would be employed at the first favourable opportunity to put down the Revolution and restore absolute monarchy. It was this conviction, strong from the first, and continually gaining strength by the conduct of the court from 1789 to 1792, which finally brought on, and rendered imperatively necessary, the subversion of the throne. And it is this conviction which induced even d’Escherny, Edition: current; Page: [85] a writer who regards the republicans with horror, and calls the constitution of 1791 un systême monstrueux, to declare, that the day of the 10th of August decided whether France should be governed by an absolute king, or by demagogues, meaning the republican leaders.*

“Avant d’avoir une monarchie constitutionnelle,” says M. Bailleul, “il fallait vaincre les hommes puissans qui n’en voulaient pas. Les erreurs viennent de ce qu’on confond toujours les institutions avec les combats qu’il fallait livrer pour les obtenir.”† This is a truth which, as applied to the French Revolution, our author cannot or will not see. In reading him, nobody would ever guess, that France had for the time no choice but between an absolute monarchy and a republic. Of the first we should never learn from him that there was the least danger; and to the latter, France according to him was only brought by the criminal recklessness of a set of hair-brained enthusiasts, wild in their ends and unscrupulous in the choice of their means, who were willing to let murder and rapine loose upon society, to deluge their country with bloodshed, and stain their consciences with guilt, for the mere difference between monarchical and republican forms.

Burke has asserted, in one of his rhapsodies against the French Revolution, that, from the day when the Etats Généraux assembled at Versailles, despotism was no more.[*] We will not take this assertion in the sense in which it was meant; for, in that sense, nothing was ever thrown out even by that author in his wildest moments, more glaringly absurd. But there is a sense in which it is perfectly well founded; that despotism, and the National Assembly, could not subsist together; and that the existence of the one necessarily implied the subversion of the other. The popular party were thoroughly aware of this. So were the royalists. They knew that, not indeed when the Assembly met, but as soon as it shewed itself firmly determined that France should be free, she was free, and could not be again enslaved while the Assembly remained, to guard and consolidate her freedom. Accordingly, the dissolution of the Assembly entered into all their plans; and they never, for a single moment, ceased plotting to accomplish it. We agree with Burke, that the Revolution, so far as it was necessary or justifiable, was terminated when the Assembly met. From that time the struggle was not for a revolution, but against a counter-revolution. To the well-grounded apprehension of such a calamity, and to the precautions necessary to be taken in order to guard against it, ought really to be ascribed all those proceedings, both of the constitutionalists and of the Gironde, which, in the former party, our author imputes to the desire of reducing the royal authority to a name; in the latter, to a fanatical hatred even of the name.[†]

Could the revolutionists forget that the attempt to put down the Revolution had once been made, and had failed only because the military had remembered that they were citizens before they were soldiers? We allude to the events which preceded the insurrection of Paris and the destruction of the Bastille.

Few of our readers, we hope, are ignorant, that in July 1789, when the Constituent Assembly had only sat for a few weeks, when it had done nothing, as yet, of what our author deems blameable in its proceedings; when his friends Lally and Mounier were still predominant in its counsels; when it had scarcely begun to occupy itself with the reform of abuses, or the establishment of a constitution, and had only had time to shew that it would not resign the entire power of legislation to the privileged classes, by giving to each order a separate voice; so early as this, troops from distant parts of the kingdom were marched upon Paris; a large force, under an avowed anti-revolutionist,[‡] was encamped in its immediate vicinity, and artillery was moved upon that city and upon Versailles, sufficient for a siege. At this juncture, Necker, and all the ministers not decidedly hostile to the new Edition: current; Page: [87] order of things, received an abrupt dismissal, and Necker was banished from France. They were succeeded by men notoriously inimical to the Revolution;[*] men odious to the people, some of them for their personal corruption, all for their political views, and every thing seemed prepared for dissolving the Assembly and crushing resistance by force of arms. That this purpose was really entertained, none but the most prejudiced and dishonest even among the royalist writers have hitherto been bold enough to deny. The king in person, at the famous séance royale, had threatened the Assembly with dissolution if it did, what it had nevertheless done.* The courtiers themselves made no secret of what was intended: with their accustomed fool-hardiness, they openly triumphed in the approaching humiliation of the popular party, and punishment of its leaders; and it is a fact known to many now living, that several members of the minority of the noblesse, who had relatives or friends connected with the court, were warned by them to save themselves, by a timely flight, from the death or captivity which was in store for them.† At this crisis the people rose in arms, organized the burgher-milita afterwards called the National Guard, were joined by a portion of the military, took the Bastille, and reduced the court to the necessity of indefinitely postponing the execution of its criminal design. Now let us hear our author speculate, and conjecture, and calculate, probabilities, in opposition to the plain and well-established facts above related.

The successful party may always cast on the loser the blame of commencing the brawl, as the wolf punished the lamb for troubling the course of the water, though he drank lowest down the stream. But when we find one party completely prepared, and ready for action, forming plans boldly, and executing them skilfully, and observe the other uncertain and unprovided, betraying all the imbecility of surprise and indecision, we must necessarily believe the attack was premeditated on the one side, and unexpected on the other. The abandonment of thirty thousand stand of arms at the Hotel des Invalides, which were surrendered without the slightest resistance, though three Swiss regiments lay encamped in the Champs Elysées; the totally unprovided state of the Bastille, garrisoned by about one hundred Swiss and Invalids, and without provisions even for that small number; the absolute inaction of the Baron de Bezenval, who—without entangling his troops in the narrow streets, which was pleaded as his excuse—might, by marching along the Boulevards, a passage so well calculated for the manoeuvres of regular troops, have relieved the siege of that fortress; and finally, that general’s bloodless retreat from Paris—shew that the king had, under all these circumstances, not only adopted no measures of a hostile character, but must, on the contrary, have issued such orders as prevented his officers from repelling force by force. We are led, therefore, to believe, that the scheme of assembling the troops round Paris was one of those half-measures, to which, with great Edition: current; Page: [88] political weakness, Louis resorted more than once—an attempt to intimidate by the demonstration of force, which he was previously resolved not to use.*

And accordingly, the insurrection is ascribed to “dark intrigues,”[*] which had been long formed by the Republican and Jacobin parties for the subversion of the throne. Thus far Sir Walter Scott. Now hear the marquis de Ferrières; himself a member of the Assembly, a deputy of the noblesse, who always voted with the noblesse, and who is so far from being a revolutionist, that there are few of the revolutionists to whom he will allow the common merit of sincerely desiring the public good: “Trente régimens,” says he, “marchaient sur Paris. Le prétexte était la tranquillité publique; l’objet réel, la dissolution des états” (Vol. I, p. 71); with much more to the same effect, from which we shall quote only what follows. The circumstances which it relates took place on the very day on which the Bastille was taken, and are the more memorable from the allusion made to them the next day by Mirabeau, in perhaps the most splendid apostrophe recorded in history.[†]

Is this sufficient? We are curious to know what more unexceptionable evidence our author can demand. No doubt he disbelieves Ferrières—though he too can quote Ferrières when it answers his purpose. No doubt he disbelieves Madame de Edition: current; Page: [89] Staël;* he disbelieves Bailly;† he disbelieves Dumouriez—a writer to whom, on other occasions, he gives even more credit than is due, and who informs us, that, even at Cherbourg, the royalists were exulting in their anticipated victory, and triumphing in the thought that the minority of the noblesse were, perhaps, already in the Bastille.‡ But we will make free to inquire, does he disbelieve two persons, who ought to know whether the design existed or not; viz. the person who planned it, and the person who was to have executed it—the minister Breteuil, and the minister and commander of the troops, the Maréchal de Broglie himself? The former boasted, both subsequently and at the time, not only of the conspiracy, but of what were to have been its sanguinary consequences; and named several of the very men who were marked out to pay with their lives the penalty of having wished their country to be free. As for Broglie, the letter is extant in which he offered himself to be the wretched instrument in the perpetration of crimes, compared with which those of the butcher of Porlier and Lacy are innocence itself.[*] “Avec cinquante mille hommes,” says he, “je me chargerais volontiers de dissiper tous ces beaux esprits qui calculent sur leurs prétentions, et cette foule d’imbécilles qui écoutent, applaudissent, et encouragent. Une salve de canons, ou une décharge de coups de fusils, aurait bientôt dispersé ces argumentateurs, et remis la puissance absolue qui s’éteint, à la place de cet esprit républicain qui se forme.” See the Correspondence published at Paris and London in 1789, and never disavowed; or the History, by the abbé de Montgaillard.§ We shall now adopt the words of the latter author.

Let no man wonder that Mounier and Lally, men whose love of freedom was sufficiently lukewarm to suit even Sir Walter Scott, were doomed to perish on the same scaffold with Barnave and Mirabeau. To have desired the liberty of France was an offence which nothing could redeem. By being more scrupulous, more moderate, a less envenomed opponent than the rest, all which was ever gained was, to be more bitterly detested. An enemy always hates those most whom he most fears; a criminal ever most abhors those among his pursuers whom he believes to be most inflexibly virtuous.

It is of little use to heap up quotations in order to convince a writer who, by an elaborate argument, concludes that it is most likely a thing is white, when every credible person who has seen it assures him that it is black. yet we cannot refrain from quoting one passage more; it is from Lacretelle; an author whose principles are those of the most decided royalism, and who has written a History of the Constituent Assembly, in a spirit generally as unfair as that of Sir Walter Scott, but who, on this occasion, pays the following tribute to truth:

This is the testimony which Sir Walter Scott would refute by a ratiocination: and what a ratiocination! Nothing can be more engaging than the amiable simplicity which it betokens, if the author is himself persuaded by his own reasoning. That want of preparation, or rather of means adequate to the intended purpose, which Edition: current; Page: [91] was really owing to blind, besotted, headlong confidence, imagining that the troops had only to show themselves and all would be quiet, he, good man, esteems a demonstrative proof that no violence was intended! Truly it is no wonder that they were unprepared, when, on the very day of the capture of the Bastille, at the very instant when a deputation of the Assembly was waiting upon the king, to represent to him the state of Paris, and express their alarms; “l’intendant de Paris était dans la chambre, en bottes et le fouet à la main, assurant que tout était tranquille;”* when, “le soir même du 14 Juillet, on regardait à Versailles dans les cercles des femmes à-la-mode et des petits-maîtres, tous les avis que l’on recevait de Paris comme autant de fables; à les entendre, il ne s’agissait que de quelques misérables, dont la maréchaussée ferait justice.”†

No wonder that the king had not given the necessary orders, when he was kept in such profound ignorance of what was passing, that he did not even know of the insurrection, and the capture of the Bastille, until the duc de Liancourt, a member of the popular party in the Assembly, who had access to him by office, as grand master of his wardrobe, awakened him in the night, and apprised him of those events which his counsellors had till then concealed from him: “Mais, dit le roi, après un silence, c’est une révolte.—Sire, c’est une Révolution.”§

Our readers must excuse us for dwelling a little longer on this great aera in the history of the Revolution. If the events themselves are important, the manner in Edition: current; Page: [92] which they are here treated is no less curious, as a specimen of the book. We are presented with a lecture, in a strain of lofty morality, on the duties which were incumbent upon Louis in this great emergency.[*] We are told, that he ought to have marched into Paris at the head of his guards, and put down the insurrection by the strong hand of power: his life itself was not too much to be sacrificed in the performance of this sacred obligation, so exalted is Sir Walter Scott’s idea of the duties of kings; but, when the revolt was quelled, our author is pleased to say that Louis would have been infinitely criminal, if he had not given to his subjects a national representation. This is excellent advice, and admirably, no doubt, the latter part of it would have been observed, if the enterprise had succeeded; but we could have suggested something which would have been still better, viz. not to attempt to deprive his subjects of the national representation which they already possessed. This would have been less grand; it would not have called upon the monarch for any exposure of his life; but it would have prevented the insurrection. To tell us that Louis ought to have put down the tumults and to have renounced despotism, when if he had renounced despotism there would have been no tumults to put down, is a very pleasant way of begging the question against the people. Other persons besides kings would have reason to be thankful for a similar lesson of morality. You rob a man of his watch: the man discovering the theft, seizes you by the collar, and insists upon your giving back the stolen property: at this juncture Sir Walter Scott comes up, and lectures you as follows: Knock down the insolent aggressor: when you have done this, I shall then hold you infinitely criminal, if you do not restore to him his watch; but in the mean time, I will gladly assist you in chastising him, his violence deserves it!

We must not pass unnoticed another characteristic trait in our author’s narrative of these transactions. When the soldiers, who were intended to overawe Paris, fraternized with the people, and refused to fire upon their fellow citizens, he can find no means of accounting for conduct so extremely un-military, except the influence of debauchery. “They were plied,” says he, “with those temptations which are most powerful with soldiers—wine, women, and money, were supplied in abundance—and it was amidst debauchery and undiscipline that the French army renounced their loyalty, which used to be even too much the god of their Edition: current; Page: [93] idolatry, and which was now destroyed like the temple of Persepolis, amidst the vapours of wine, and at the instigation of courtezans.”*

Does not Sir Walter Scott richly deserve the pointed sarcasm of Madame de Staël, upon the royalist party? “Un des grands malheurs de ceux qui vivent dans les cours, c’est de ne pouvoir se faire une idée de ce que c’est qu’une nation.”† Once more, does our author really not believe in the possibility of public spirit or patriotism, or if these expressions do not please him, sincere enthusiasm? The alternative was that of being slaves or freemen, of enslaving their countrymen or helping them to be free; and he can find no more creditable motive for preferring freedom, than wine, women, and money! If Sir Walter Scott had one tenth part as much knowledge of the Revolution, as an author who writes its history ought to have, he would have known that the sentiments which, according to him, it required debauchery to excite in the regiments assembled at the metropolis, were shared by the military without the aid of debauchery, all over France. Let him read, for example, the address of the garrison of Strasbourg to the National Assembly on the 16th October, 1789, a perfect model of propriety and good taste:‡ let him read in Dumouriez’s Memoirs§ the conduct of the garrison of Cherbourg; let him read in Bouillé’s Memoirs,¶ or in Soulavie’s Annals of Louis XVI,[*] or in the Life of Malesherbes, the refusal of the troops in Dauphiné, even before the Revolution, to act against the people:** let him read in the Histoire de la Révolution par Deux Amis de la Liberté, numerous instances of the most sublime disinterestedness and self-devotion in these very gardes-françaises whom he has so unjustly inculpated, and he will then see whether these were men who needed the “vapours of wine” and the “instigation of courtezans,” to impel them to act as citizens and freemen ought.[†]

We make no apology for having detained our readers so long on the first and greatest epoch of the Revolution. Where, from the immensity of the subject, much must necessarily be left undone, it is better to establish one important point thoroughly, than a hundred imperfectly. If the reader is now convinced, that Sir∥Edition: current; Page: [94] Walter Scott has altogether misunderstood and misrepresented that event upon which all the subsequent history of the Revolution turns (and if he is not, we utterly despair of making any impression upon him), he will be willing to believe without much further proof, that the other great events of the Revolution are similarly dealt with. Yet, in alluding to the plots and aggressions of the royalist party against the order of things established by the Constituent Assembly, we cannot help pausing for a moment at the famous fifth of October, 1789, to give a further specimen of our author’s fitness for the office of an accurate and impartial historian.

We need scarcely remind any reader, not thoroughly unacquainted with the facts of the Revolution, that, on the occasion to which we allude, the king was brought from Versailles to the Tuileries, under circumstances of considerable indignity, by a mob of Parisians who sallied out from Paris for this if for any preconcerted purpose, and by a portion of whom, during their stay at Versailles, various excesses were committed, and in particular an attempt was made (there is too much reason to believe) against the life of the queen. In all this, our author is very perfect; but he never hints that a plot existed among the royalists to convey the king to Metz, and placing him under the protection of the anti-revolutionary general Bouillé, to commence a civil war; that a variety of other intrigues were on foot for effecting a counter-revolution, and that the removal of the king from Versailles to Paris, was really on the part of the revolutionists a defensive act. Yet he would have found all this asserted not only by many writers of the constitutional party, but by the royalist Ferrières;* it has been avowed by Breteuil, Bouillé,[*] and the comte de Mercy, then ambassador of Austria at the court of France;† and it may be gathered even from the proceedings before the Châtelet, notwithstanding the strenuous efforts of that tribunal to disguise it. Our author does not scruple to quote Ferrières for an insignificant expression vaguely attributed to Barnave, which he imagines can be turned in some manner to the discredit of that distinguished person.[†] We have seen, however, that Sir Walter Scott can be very incredulous, as well as very easy of belief, when a favourite hypothesis is concerned. Even if he did not give credit to the assertion of Ferrières with respect to the royalist plots, that assertion proves at least, that their reality was generally believed; and might have suggested to our author that there may have been a more creditable motive for wishing to bring the king to Paris, than the desire of placing him and the Assembly “under the influence of popular frenzy.”[‡]

But our author had a different theory. We need scarcely say, that in his theory all is ascribed to the manoeuvres of the republican party; his established mode of accounting for all the commotions under the first two national assemblies. The Edition: current; Page: [95] imputed object of these agitators, is of course the establishment of a republic; and he insinuates that regicide formed, even at this time, part of their ultimate intentions. Need we repeat, that this pretended republican party is a mere fiction of his own brain; that no such party existed for nearly two years afterwards; and that most of the men who subsequently composed it were, at this time, peaceably following their professions at Bordeaux or Marseilles? Will our author pretend that Mirabeau and the Duke of Orleans were republicans, or will he deny, that, by the universal admission of revolutionists and royalists, this affair was concerted by them, if concerted at all? Sir Walter Scott is not contented with inventing leaders for this popular tumult, he must invent subordinate agents for it too. “The Jacobins were the first to sound the alarm through all their clubs and societies.”[*] The reader may form some conception of the accuracy of this history, and of the spirit in which it is written, when we inform him, that at this time the Jacobin club did not exist, much less any of the affiliated societies. The “alarm” was sounded, to use our author’s expression, not in any club or society, but in the district assemblies, and in a place tolerably well known in the Revolution, to wit, the gardens of the Palais-Royal; not by Jacobins, but by all the more ardent and enthusiastic partisans of the Revolution, to whom indeed it is sufficiently fashionable to give that now opprobrious name, but who had nothing whatever in common with the party called the Terrorists, to whom alone the appellation of Jacobins is usually given by our author.

The reader must forgive us, if a desire to do justice to the wisest, most honest, and most calumniated, body of legislators, who ever held in their hands the destinies of a nation, induces us to be more prolix than may perhaps suit that class of minds, to whom the truth or falsehood of an historical statement is matter of indifference compared with its liveliness or dulness. It is for the maligner of the Constituent Assembly, it is for the apologist, the panegyrist, of the vindictive and sanguinary satellites of despotism, it is for him to be amusing, he knows that his readers, at least those whom he chiefly cares for, are to the full as eager to believe him, as he to be believed. It is for Sir Walter Scott to assert: our part must be to prove. Assertion is short, and proof is long: assertion is entertaining, and proof is dull: assertion may be read, as glibly and as cursorily as it is written; proof supposes thought in the writer, and demands it of the reader. Happy the historian who can permit himself to assert, for he will count ten readers to one of him who is compelled to prove!

There was scarcely a month during the first three years of the Revolution, which was not signalized by some plot or counter-revolutionary movement in the interior.* In the south of France, large bodies of armed men were repeatedly collected, for the avowed purpose of restoring the ancient order of things. The Edition: current; Page: [96] assemblages which took place and the camps which were formed at Jalès and elsewhere, form a highly important, though to most persons almost an unknown, chapter of the history of the Revolution.* Armed bodies of emigrant Frenchmen were constantly hovering over the frontiers, by the connivance, and at length with the open encouragement, of the neighbouring powers: while France might be said to be without an army for her defence, the officers being counter-revolutionists almost to a man, feuds existing in most of the regiments between them and the soldiers, which were fomented even by the royalists, in order to disorganize the army, and disable it from offering any effectual resistance.† The ministers of the king were several of them declared anti-revolutionists. The courtiers and the privileged classes were continually giving out, that the emigrants were on the point of returning with a powerful army to dissolve the Assembly, and deliver its leaders to the rigour of the law.‡ The royalists openly and universally asserted that the king was insincere in his professions of attachment to the new institutions; and nothing contributed more than these reports, to convert the enthusiastic attachment which was universally manifested towards him when he gave in his adhesion to the constitution, into suspicion and hatred. Ferrières has no doubt that, if Louis had put forth his authority, and exerted his personal influence over the troops, he could have crushed the Assembly;§ and so conscious were the popular leaders of their own insecurity, that the abbé Sieyès said to a person, from whom we have the information, toutes les nuits je vois ma tête rouler sur le plancher. Even in 1791, the aristocrats, according to Ferrières, “ne parlaient que de guerre, de sang, et de vengeance.”¶ It was suspected at the time, it is now fully established by the avowals of the minister Bertrand de Moleville (who enters into the minutest details on the subject), that the king was in regular correspondence with the emigrants and with foreign powers, to procure his restoration to absolute authority by Austrian bayonets. Meanwhile he continued to profess, in language apparently the most feeling and sincere, his adherence to the new order of things. He came spontaneously to the Assembly on the 4th of February, 1790, to associate himself formally (such was his expression) with the plans and proceedings of the Assembly; and professed a devoted attachment to the new constitution, in a really eloquent and affecting speech, if we could suppose it to be sincere, which rendered him for a considerable time the idol of the people.[*] At the federation of July 1790∥Edition: current; Page: [97] (an event of which, strange to say, our author makes no mention), he solemnly swore adherence to the constitution; he spontaneously renewed his oath but a few weeks before his flight from Paris;* he spontaneously addressed to his ambassadors abroad, for communication to the courts at which they were accredited, a long letter, embodying every thing in sentiment which was constitutional, and revolutionary, and such as La Fayette himself would have dictated, together with the firmest assurances that he highly approved of the Revolution; that France’s greatest enemies were the enemies of the new order of things, and that the pretence that he was not free was a calumny:† again and again he solemnly assured La Fayette, Rochambeau, and others, that he had no intention of flying; and this almost up to the very day when he fled to join the allies, leaving behind him a solemn protestation against all which had been done since the 5th of October 1789, from which date, he pretended, his want of liberty had rendered the sanction which he had given to all the decrees of the Assembly, a nullity.[*]

We do not recite these facts for the sake of casting reproach upon the memory of Louis. His faults have been bitterly expiated. But, in bare justice to the men who, after all this, had the generosity to replace him on the throne, it ought to be considered whether they had not reason to be niggardly of power to such a king, so circumstanced; a king, whose word, whose oath, was an empty sound; a king, incapable of adhering to his firmest convictions, and surrounded by persons who, if he formed an honest resolution, never suffered him to keep it.

If we have had any success at all in convincing our readers, we have now made it apparent to them, that the Constituent Assembly understood their own position, and that of their country, far better than Sir Walter Scott imagines, and that if they did not adopt the course which he, judging after the event, imagines would have prevented the ills which befel their country, it was not because they were less wise than he, but because they were wiser. No course which they could have adopted would have been so dangerous, as to establish a vigorous and efficient executive government with Louis at its head. And few will blame them for not having adopted the only third course which was open to them, the deposition and confinement of the king; few will deny that, before proceeding to this last and most painful extremity, such a scheme of limited monarchy as they attempted was an experiment which they would not have been excusable if they had refused to try. It is on the probabilities of success which this scheme held out, that we ground the Edition: current; Page: [98] justification of the Constituent Assembly; it is on the failure of the experiment, that we rest our defence of the Gironde, or, as our author terms it, the Republican party, who succeeded them.

None have sustained so much injustice at the hands of our author as this last, and most unfortunate party: of none have the conduct and aims been so miserably misunderstood, so cruelly perverted. The following extract is a very favourable specimen of his mode of treating them.

After saying that the Girondist party was “determined that the Revolution should never stop until the downfal of the monarchy,” our author continues:

Its most distinguished champions were men bred as lawyers in the south of France, who had, by mutual flattery, and the habit of living much together, acquired no small portion of that self-conceit and over-weening opinion of each other’s talents, which may be frequently found among small provincial associations for political or literary purposes. Many had eloquence, and most of them a high fund of enthusiasm, which a classical education, and their intimate communication with each other, where each idea was caught up, lauded, re-echoed, and enhanced, had exalted into a spirit of republican zeal. They doubtless had personal ambition, but in general it seems not to have been of a low or selfish character. Their aims were often honourable though visionary, and they marched with great courage towards their proposed goal, with the vain purpose of erecting a pure republic in a state so disturbed as that of France, and by hands so polluted as those of their Jacobin associates. It will be recorded, however, to the disgrace of their pretensions to stern republican virtue, that the Girondists were willing to employ, for the accomplishment of their purpose, those base and guilty tools which afterwards effected their own destruction. They were for using the revolutionary means of insurrection and violence, until the republic should be established, and no longer; or, in the words of the satirist,

He afterwards terms them, in a spirit of more bitter contempt, “the association of philosophical rhapsodists, who hoped to oppose pikes with syllogisms, and to govern a powerful country by the discipline of an academy.”†

He derides “the affected and pedantic fanaticism of republican zeal of the Girondists, who were amusing themselves with schemes, to which the country of France, the age and the state of manners were absolutely opposed.”‡

And elsewhere, he calls them, “the Brissotin, or Girondist faction” (he seldom, if ever, terms the supporters of despotism a faction), “who, though averse to the existence of a monarchy, and desiring a republic instead, had still somewhat more Edition: current; Page: [99] of principle and morals than the mere Revolutionists and Jacobins, who were altogether destitute of both.”*

The utmost which he can find to say in behalf of the purest and most disinterested body of men, considered as a party, who ever figured in history, among whose leaders not so much as one man of even doubtful integrity and honour can be found, is, that they had “somewhat more” of principle and morals, than persons who were “altogether destitute of both”!

His commendations of one of their number are less sparingly bestowed.

In raking up the disgusting history of mean and bloody-minded demagogues, it is impossible not to dwell on the contrast afforded by the generous and self-devoted character of Barbaroux, who young, handsome, generous, noble-minded, and disinterested, sacrificed his family-happiness, his fortune, and finally his life, to an enthusiastic, though mistaken, zeal for the liberty of his country.†

Unquestionably nothing can be better deserved than this panegyric; but why is a particular individual singled out to be the subject of it, when he, although excellent, was only one among many, alike in all the noble qualities which adorned this favourite of our author, and for the misery of France, alike also in their unhappy fate? Justice required that the same measure should be dealt out to them as to Barbaroux, even if it were true that their zeal for the liberty of their country was a “mistaken” zeal, and that they were for using the “revolutionary means of insurrection and violence” to establish a republic. But their zeal was not a mistaken zeal, and they were not for establishing a republic by insurrection and violence; most of them did not contemplate a republic at all, and designed at most nothing further than to depose the king, and elevate the young prince royal, under the direction of a council of regency, to the constitutional throne.

These may be startling assertions to some, who have formed their opinions solely from the indefatigable perseverance with which Sir Walter Scott, almost in every page, assures us of the contrary: but however paradoxical here, on the other side of the channel they are established truths, which few persons indeed of any party think of disputing, and of which nothing but the profound ignorance of our countrymen on the Revolution, could render it necessary to offer any proof: especially as this is not in any degree a question of opinion and reasoning, but one of mere fact and evidence, which every person, who has read the authorities carefully, is competent to decide.

We have already mentioned, that the first germ of a republican party appeared in France, when the king, after a long course of dissimulation and insincerity, fled from the capital, and was brought back by force. Notwithstanding the decisive evidence which he had thus afforded of his undiminished hostility to the constitution, the predominant party in the Constituent Assembly thought fit to Edition: current; Page: [100] restore him to the throne. We are far from contending that they ought to have acted otherwise, although Sir Walter Scott is of that opinion, and maintains that they were alike wrong in again offering, and Louis in accepting, the constitutional crown.[*] What is now his opinion, was that of many of the more ardent revolutionists at the time; and, among the rest, of a few who subsequently became aggregated to the Gironde party; for the great majority, including those from whom that party derives its distinctive name, were not in Paris until they came thither as members of the second National Assembly. In July 1791, before the resolution had been definitively taken to reinstate the king, a meeting was held in the Champ de Mars to subscribe a petition calling for his dethronement.[†] In this document no change in the monarchical constitution of France, as decreed by the Constituent Assembly, was hinted at: but the acknowledged fact, that the petition was drawn up by Brissot, whose speculative opinions were certainly republican, together with an expression of Brissot and Pétion, about the same time, which is recorded by Madame Roland, “qu’il fallait préparer les esprits à la république,”[‡] and the fact, that a newspaper under the title of The Republican was set on foot at this period by Brissot and Condorcet (although it only reached the second number), seem to render it probable, that if they had succeeded in obtaining the deposition of Louis, they would really have made an effort for the establishment of a republican government in preference to a change of monarch.* When the Assembly, however, under the guidance of Barnave and Chapelier, esteemed up to that time the most democratic of the popular leaders, re-established royalty in the person of the former sovereign, the idea of a republic was dropped, and the two or three men who had entertained it became amalgamated with the general body of the Girondist party, who, as we have previously stated, were not republicans.

The difference between the Constitutionalists and the Gironde, at the opening of the second, or Legislative Assembly, is thus expressed by Mignet: “Il [the Gironde party] n’avait alors aucun projet subversif; mais il était disposé à défendre la révolution de toutes les manières, à la différence des constitutionnels, qui ne voulaient la défendre qu’avec la loi.”[§] This assertion of Mignet (whom however we do not cite as an authority, since he was not, any more than ourselves, a contemporary and actor in the scene) is borne out by the direct testimony of every credible witness who had any tolerable means of knowing the fact. It is demonstrated as cogently by the recorded acts and speeches of the men themselves.

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Sir Walter Scott, as we have already observed, has allowed, has asserted indeed, with more confidence than we should venture to do, that the reasons for deposing Louis preponderated, at the time of his return from Varennes, over those for retaining him on the throne.[*] These reasons, which our author considered sufficient, could be no others, than the certainty of the king’s insincerity, and the necessity of having a first magistrate sincerely attached to the constitution. Let us reflect how vastly more imminent that necessity had become, in the interval which separated the meeting of the second National Assembly from the memorable 10th of August 1792.

During this period, a new and most formidable element of danger had been introduced into the already perilous and embarrassing state of public affairs. A foreign despot had not only countenanced the emigrants in their warlike preparations, and in assuming a hostile attitude on the frontier, but had presumed to require, as a condition of friendship between the two governments, the re-establishment of the monarchy upon the footing of the royal declaration of the 23rd of June, 1789.[†] War had ensued; its commencement had been disastrous, an invasion was at hand, and the disorganization of the army, from the general relaxation of discipline, the emigration of most of the officers, and the want of military experience in the soldiers, had reached to such a height, that nothing but the most unheard-of efforts, such efforts as were at last made by Dumouriez and Carnot, could give the nation a chance of saving herself from the enemies of her freedom. It was not in such times as these that France could be preserved by men who were only half desirous that she should extricate herself from her difficulties. There were needed other “organizers of victory”[‡] than a chief magistrate who sympathized with the invaders of his country more than with his country itself. It was not from Louis that exertions could be expected for the prosecution of a war against his own brothers, and the assertors of his absolute authority. Yet not so soon did the Gironde renounce the hope of saving at once their country and the king. Louis, who was as vacillating in his choice of counsellors as in his counsels, had changed from a purely royalist to a mixed administration composed of constitutionalists and royalists. The divisions which speedily arose in this motley ministry (our author is here, as usual, most elaborately wrong) had terminated by the dismissal of the leading constitutional minister,[§] which the Assembly soon caused to be succeeded by the forced retirement of his royalist colleagues. Louis selected his next ministers from the ranks of the Gironde; and so far was this party from entertaining any hostility to the king, that Roland and Clavières, as Madame Edition: current; Page: [102] Roland informs us,[*] were at first completely the dupes of his apparent sincerity. Had he consented to the strong measures which they deemed necessary to secure the constitution against its foreign and internal enemies, they would have continued in office, and Louis probably, had remained constitutional monarch of France. But he refused to sanction the two decrees of the Assembly, for the banishment of the non-juring priests,* and for the formation of a camp of twenty thousand men under the walls of Paris.[†] The discussions consequent on this refusal occasioned the dismissal of the Girondist ministers, and ultimately produced the downfall of the throne: not however until the leading Girondists had made another effort to save the unfortunate and misguided monarch, which we shall relate in the words of their friend and apologist Bailleul.

This Mémoire, admirable for its good sense and good feeling, may be seen in the Appendix to the second volume of the Memoirs of Dumouriez, as recently reprinted at Paris.[†] It is with difficulty that we refrain from increasing the length of an already long article, by transcribing this document into our pages. We beseech the reader to refer to it, to read it diligently, and then endure, if he can, to hear these men represented as conspirators, who plotted the destruction of royalty, who watched the king’s acts with a desire to find them such as afforded a hold for misrepresentation, and were never so well pleased as when he rendered himself unpopular, and gave pretexts for holding up his office as a nuisance, and himself as an enemy of the people. We cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of employing, for the expression of our own feelings, the affecting words of M. Bailleul.

Greatly as we have already exceeded the usual limits of an article, we cannot permit ourselves to leave the stain which is attempted to be cast upon men in so many respects admirable, imperfectly washed away. We should feel as if we had violated a duty, if we did not exhibit by ample evidence how unanimously men of all parties have concurred in exculpating the Girondists from the imputations now sought to be fixed upon them by Sir Walter Scott. We shall offer no apology to the reader for heaping up a multitude of attestations; we do not solicit his attention to this mass of evidence, we demand it. We demand it in the name and in behalf of the whole human race, whom it deeply imports that justice should be done, at least by another age, to the few statesmen who have cared for their happiness. Does the man exist who, having read the accusation brought against such men, will consider it too much trouble to listen to the defence? Let such amuse themselves with romance; it belongs to other men to read history.

Our first quotation shall be drawn from the Histoire de la Révolution de France, par Deux Amis de la Liberté, one of the most impartial works which have appeared on the subject of the Revolution, and written, as our quotation will shew, in a spirit very far indeed from being favourable to the Gironde:

“Quoique la faction des Girondins,” says Soulavie, “fût un composé de toute sorte d’opinions, sa majorité a voulu une régence pendant la minorité du fils de Louis XVI, pour gouverner et pour perdre la reine, dont les projets connus de contre-révolution mettaient en péril, non-seulement l’existence politique mais la vie même des Girondins.”* If we were disposed to place much dependence upon anecdotes, which are only related by this author, we could transcribe several which he adduces to show that not only down to the subversion of the throne, but almost to the very day when the convention met and the republic was proclaimed, neither the Gironde nor the Montagne had finally decided upon establishing it: we could quote the story which he tells of the almost ludicrous consternation of Condorcet and Sieyès, when this event was reported to them,† and the declaration of the minister Montmorin to Soulavie himself, that a republic was then the least bad of all governments which were likely to be established, but that what the Gironde desired was a regency, which would be infinitely worse.[*] As we have less confidence, however, in the testimony of Soulavie, than in that of either of the writers whom we have before quoted, we allude to his evidence only in confirmation of theirs, and shall proceed to show that the royalists themselves, even those among them who have spoken of the Gironde with the most bitter hatred, have by no means accused them of being republicans, but of wishing for a king who should distribute honours and places among themselves, or, at most, of being indifferent to every form of government, provided they themselves were at the head of it. We have no apprehension that these last imputations should be believed, for Sir Walter Scott himself does ample justice to the character of the Girondists, as far as regards personal views; but, that the only accusation brought against them by their bitterest enemies should be that of selfish ambition,[†] proves at least the extreme absurdity of the charge of fanatical republicanism, and the following passages further add the direct testimony of the most decided, and the most trustworthy of the royalist writers, to the fact that most of these statesmen were not republicans.

We shall begin with Ferrières, generally the most candid and impartial of the royalists, but whose moderation entirely deserts him when he touches upon the Girondists. This writer particularly distinguishes the Girondist party from the republicans. Among the latter, he ranks Buzot and Pétion; but of the Girondists, especially the deputies of the Gironde itself, Vergniaud, Guadet, Gensonné, Edition: current; Page: [107] Ducos, and Fonfrède, he says, “Les Girondins étaient assez indifférens à la forme du gouvernement pourvu qu’ils gouvernassent et qu’ils pussent disposer de l’argent et des places; mais sentant que les constitutionnels ne lâcheraient pas leur proie, ils se rallièrent aux républicains, attendant à prendre un parti décidé d’après les événemens, et à se vendre à la cour ou à se donner à la république, selon que l’exigeraient leurs intérêts et les circonstances” (Vol. III, pp. 16-17). Assuredly, if these persons had shown the slightest symptom of fanatical attachment to a republican government, and hatred of royalty, such things could not have been said of them. Again, long after the insurrection, or rather tumult, of the 20th June 1792, we are told by Ferrières, “les Girondins ne voulaient qu’effrayer la cour. La déchéance n’entrait pas alors dans leurs vues,” (Vol. III, p. 165): that Pétion opposed the insurrection of the 10th of August, because it was the wish of the Gironde that the deposition of Louis should be decreed by the Assembly, and executed without tumult or violence (p. 178); that the Gironde had no concern in that insurrection (p. 180); that they were astonished at it (p. 182); that even at the opening of the convention, “la république n’était point définitivement arrêtée dans l’opinion des Girondins” (p. 245); and was carried independently of them, by what he terms the republican party.

Our next authority shall be Bertrand de Moleville, a royalist far more inveterately prejudiced than Ferrières; a man who avowedly disapproves of the introduction of any form of representative government into France, and cannot quite reconcile himself to its existence in England; and this man, it is important to observe, was a minister of Louis within a few months preceding his deposition. This author always speaks of the Girondists in the bitterest terms, and even accuses them of what we believe was never imputed to them by any other writer (it was scarcely insinuated even in the acte d’accusation against them, by the horrible Amar),[*] we mean personal corruption. After speaking of the letter (formerly alluded to) which was addressed to the king by the trois scélérats (it is thus that he designates Vergniaud, Guadet, and Gensonné)*—of which letter he seems to confess that he knew the contents only at second-hand (he certainly gives a most incorrect account of them), he next describes a plan of insurrection, which he affirms to have been devised by the Gironde in consequence of the ill success of their attempt to conciliate the king; and hereupon he observes.

The abbé Georgel, a Jesuit, than whom the abbé Barruel himself scarcely regards the Revolution with a more frantic abhorrence, takes precisely the same view of the conduct and designs of the Gironde.* We shall not prolong our article by quoting, in the ipsissima verba of this author, any portion of his dull abuse. The substance of it is all contained in the passages which we have already quoted from Bertrand and Ferrières.

It will be thought, probably, that we have rather been too profuse than too sparing of evidence to prove Sir Walter Scott ignorant of his subject, and the story of the reckless enthusiasm and republican zeal of the Girondists a romance. It will amuse the reader to compare the above quotations with the passages which we previously transcribed from Sir Walter Scott. They contradict him point-blank in every particular, whether of praise or of blame. In support of his view of the Gironde we can find only one authority, that of Madame de Staël;[*] the most questionable of all witnesses, when she deposes to any facts but those within her own immediate observation. We have not nearly exhausted the evidence on the other side. We have cited as yet none of the witnesses who may be supposed partial to the Gironde, except Bailleul, from whom, moreover, we have drawn but a small part of the testimony which his highly instructive pages afford. We shall only further direct the attention of the reader to Lavallée, a writer of no very decided political opinions, but friendly to the Gironde, being personally acquainted with their principal leaders, and having been an employé of Roland, when minister of the interior. From him we have an interesting statement of what passed at a secret meeting of the leading Girondists and one or two other persons. They were all agreed that France was in a state nearly approximating to anarchy; that it would remain so, until there was a change of government; and that, with a view to this change, it was above all to be desired, that the king should voluntarily abdicate; but they were by no means agreed, supposing that a change could be brought about, what the change should be. Brissot declared strongly for a republic; Gensonné desired time for consideration; Condorcet and Guadet were not indisposed to a proposition which was made, of elevating the prince of Conti to the Regency; and, when the meeting broke up, nothing had been resolved upon.† If any decision was subsequently come to, the appointment of the Girondist ministry, which took place Edition: current; Page: [109] subsequently, must naturally have altered it; and what is known of their subsequent plans has been already stated.

We shall here take our leave, both of the Girondists and of Sir Walter Scott. We have left much unsaid, which cannot so properly be said on any other occasion; many misrepresentations unanswered, which it would have been of importance to expose. We would willingly have entered into considerable details respecting the royalist party, whose faults our author has extenuated as much as he has exaggerated those of the revolutionists; respecting the Montagnards, some of whom individually he has treated with great injustice, and of whose character and principles of action, as a body, he has no more than the most superficial conception; respecting the libéraux of the present day, whom he has treated, in the latter part of his work, with greater asperity and unfairness than is shewn towards the revolutionists themselves.* We could have wished to take notice of his sophisms on the Napoleon Code,[*] and on every subject, without exception, connected with English institutions and English politics; sophisms which are adapted to the state of all these different questions twenty years ago, and which prove that from that time he has kept his eyes closed to all that has been passing around him, and can neither accommodate his mode of defence to the present modes of attack, nor to the existing state of the public mind. But we must forbear all this, and in conclusion, we shall only say, that with all the faults which we have pointed out Edition: current; Page: [110] and all those which we have not pointed out in this book, the lover of truth has reason to rejoice at its appearance. Much as Sir Walter Scott has wronged the honest part of the revolutionists, the general opinion has hitherto wronged them far more; and to have much chance of correcting that opinion, it was perhaps necessary to temporize with it, and at first give into some portion of the prevailing error. The work contains juster views, and above all, breathes a less malignant spirit, than almost any other Tory publication on the Revolution, and will so far work a beneficial effect upon many minds, which would turn from a perfectly true history of the Revolution without examination or inquiry. We have, therefore, pointed out the errors of this work, not with any wish to see its influence diminished, far less with any hostility towards the author, for whom, politics apart, we share that admiration which is felt by every person possessing a knowledge of the English language. We have been influenced solely by the conviction, that if some readers can as yet endure no more than a part of the truth, there are many who are fully prepared to listen to the whole; and that our remarks have a greater chance of being extensively read and attended to, by being connected, however indirectly, with so celebrated a name.

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ALISON’S HISTORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 1833

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EDITOR’S NOTE

Monthly Repository, n.s. VII (July, and Aug., 1833), 507-11, and 513-16. Title footnoted: “History of Europe during the French Revolution, embracing the period from the Assembly of the Notables in 1789, to the establishment of the Directory in 1796. By Archibald Alison, F.R.S.E. Advocate. In 2 vols. 8vo. [Edinburgh: Blackwood: London: Cadell,] 1833.” Running titles: “The French Revolution.” Unsigned. Most of the second part (Aug., 1833) republished in Dissertations and Discussions, I, 56-62, entitled: “A Few Observations on the French Revolution,” with the title footnoted: “From a review of the first two volumes of Alison’s History of Europe, Monthly Repository, August 1833.” Running titles: “The French Revolution.” Identified in Mill’s bibliography as “A review of Alison’s History of the French Revolution in the Monthly Repository for July and August 1833” (MacMinn, 32-3). The copy of the article (tear-sheets) in Mill’s library, Somerville College, headed in Mill’s hand, “From the Monthly Repository for July & August 1833,” contains two corrections also in Mill’s hand (here adopted), at 116.14 “this” is altered to “his”, at 119.2 “our” is altered to “an”.

The following text, taken from the Monthly Repository (our usual rule of using the latest version as copy-text here not applying to D&D because only part of the text was republished), is collated with those in D&D, 1st ed. (1859), and 2nd ed. (1867). In the footnoted variants, “59” indicates D&D, 1st ed., and “67” indicates D&D, 2nd ed.

For comment on the essay, see xlvi-l and xcvi-xcvii above.

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Alison’s History of the French Revolution

of history, the most honoured, if not honourable species of composition, is not the whole purport biographic? History, it has been said, is the essence of innumerable biographies.[*] Such, at least, it should be: whether it is, might admit of question. But, in any case, what hope have we in turning over those old interminable chronicles, with their garrulities and insipidities; or still worse, in patiently examining those modern narrations, of the philosophic kind, where philosophy, teaching by experience, must sit like owl on house-top, seeing nothing, understanding nothing, uttering only, with solemnity enough, her perpetual most wearisome hoo, hoo,—what hope have we, except the for most part fallacious one of gaining some acquaintance with our fellow-creatures, though dead and vanished, yet dear to us; how they got along in those old days, suffering and doing, to what extent, and under what circumstances, they resisted the devil, and triumphed over him, or struck their colours to him, and were trodden under foot by him; how, in short, the perennial battle went, which men name life, which we also in these new days, with indifferent fortune, have to fight, and must bequeath to our sons and grandsons to go on fighting, till the enemy one day be quite vanquished and abolished, or else the great night sink and part the combatants; and thus, either by some Millennium or some new Noah’s Deluge, the volume of universal history wind itself up! Other hope, in studying such books, we have none and that it is a deceitful hope, who that has tried knows not? A feast of widest biographic insight is spread for us; we enter full of hungry anticipation, alas! like so many other feasts, which life invites us to, a mere Ossian’s feast of shells,[†] the food and liquor being all emptied out and clean gone, and only the vacant dishes and deceitful emblems thereof left! Your modern historical restaurateurs are indeed little better than high-priests of famine, that keep choicest china dinner-sets, only no dinner to serve therein. Yet such is our biographic appetite, we run trying from shop to shop, with ever new hope, and, unless we could eat the wind, with ever new disappointment.*

Thus writes, although in a publication unworthy of him, an author whom the multitude does not yet, and will not soon understand. The biographic aspect here so exclusively dwelt upon, is indeed not the only aspect under which history may profitably and pleasantly be contemplated: but if we find ourselves disappointed of what it ought to afford us in this kind, most surely our search will be equally vain for all other fruit. If what purports to be the history of any portion of mankind, keep Edition: current; Page: [114] not its promise of making us understand and represent to ourselves what manner of men those were whose story it pretends to be, let it undertake what else it may, it will assuredly perform nothing.

To know our fellow-creature, [we still quote from the same author,] to see into him, understand his goings forth, decipher the whole heart of his mystery;[*] nay, not only to see into him, but even to see out of him, to view the world altogether as he views it, so that we can theoretically construe him, and could almost practically personate him, and do now thoroughly discern both what manner of man he is, and what manner of thing he has got to work on and live on.[†]

This is what a perfect biography, could such be obtained, of any single human being, would do for us, or more properly enable us to do for ourselves, and the perfection of a history, considered in its biographic character, would be to accomplish something of the same kind for an entire nation or an entire age. Thus in respect to the French Revolution, though complete insight is not to be had, we should have been thankful for anything that could have aided us in forming for ourselves even an imperfect picture of the manner in which a Frenchman, at the period of the breaking out of the Revolution lived: what his thoughts were habitually occupied with; what feelings were excited in him by the universe, or by any of the things that dwell therein; above all, what things he fixed his desires upon; what he did for his bread; what things he cared for besides bread; with what evils he had to contend, and how he was enabled to bear up against them; what were his joys, what his consolations, and to what extent he was able to attain them. Such clear view of him and of his circumstances, is the basis of all true knowledge and understanding of the Revolution. Having thus learnt to understand a Frenchman of those days, we would next be helped to know, and to bring vividly before our minds, the new circumstances in which the Revolution placed him, how those circumstances painted themselves to his eyes, from his point of view; what, as a consequence of the conception he formed of them, he thought, felt, and did, not only in the political, but perhaps still more in what may be called “the private biographic phasis; the manner in which individuals demeaned themselves, and social life went on, in so extraordinary an element as that; the most extraordinary, one might say, for the ‘thin rind of habit’ was utterly rent off, and man stood there with all the powers of civilization, and none of its rules to aid him in guiding these.”[‡]

Such things we would willingly learn from a history of the Revolution; but who among its historians teaches the like? or has ought of that kind to teach? or has ever Edition: current; Page: [115] had the thought strike him that such things are to be taught or learnt? Not Mr. Alison’s predecessors, of whom, nevertheless, there must be some twenty who have written better books than his; far less Mr. Alison himself. How should he? When in the course of ages a man arises who can conceive a character, though it be but of one being, and can make his readers conceive it too, we call him a dramatist, and write down his name in the short list of the world’s great minds; are we then entitled to expect from every respectable, quiet, well-meaning Tory gentleman, that he shall be capable of forming within himself, and impressing upon us, a living image of the character and manner of existence, not of one human being, but of a nation or a century of mankind? To throw our own mind into the mind and into the circumstances of another, is one of the most trying of all exercises of the intellect and imagination, and the very conception how great a thing it is, seems to imply the capacity of at least partially performing it.

Not to judge Mr. Alison by so high a standard, but by the far lower one of what has actually been achieved by previous writers on the subject, let us endeavour to estimate the worth of his book, and his qualifications as a historian.

And first, of his merits. He is evidently what is termed a kind-hearted, or, at the very least, a good-natured man. Though a Tory, and, therefore, one in whom some prejudices against the actors in the Revolution might be excused, he is most unaffectedly candid and charitable in his judgment of them. Though he condemns them as politicians, he is more indulgent to them as men than even we are, who look with much less disapprobation upon many of their acts. He has not, indeed, that highest impartiality which proceeds from philosophic insight, but abundance of that lower kind which flows from milkiness of disposition. He can appreciate talent; he does not join in the ill-informed and rash assertion of the Edinburgh Review, reechoed by the Quarterly, that the first authors of the French Revolution were mediocre men;[*] on the contrary, speaking in his preface of the Constituent Assembly, he talks of its “memorable discussions,” and of himself as “most forcibly impressed with the prodigious, though often perverted and mistaken ability, which distinguished them.”[†] Mr. Alison has a further merit, and in a man of his quality of mind it is a most positive one—he is no canter. He does not think it necessary to profess to be shocked, or terrified, at opinions or modes of conduct contrary to what are deemed proper and reputable in his own country. He does not guard his own respectability by a saving clause, whenever he has occasion to name or to praise even a Mirabeau. We should never think of this as a quality worthy of particular notice in a mind accustomed to vigorous and independent thought; but in Edition: current; Page: [116] whatever mind it exists, it is evidence of that which is the first condition of all worth, a desire to be rather than to seem.

Having said thus much on the favourable side, turn we to the other column of the account, and here we have to say simply this, that, after reading both these volumes carefully through, we are quite completely unable to name any one thing that Mr. Alison has done, which had not been far better done before; or to conjecture what could lead him to imagine that such a work as he has produced was any desideratum in the existing literature on the subject. It is hard to say of any book that it is altogether useless; that it contains nothing from which man, woman, or child can derive any one particle of benefit, learn any one thing worth knowing; but a more useless book than this of Mr. Alison’s, one which approaches nearer to the ideal of absolute inutility, we believe we might go far to seek.

We have not often happened to meet with an author of any work of pretension less endowed than Mr. Alison with the faculty of original thought; his negation of genius amounts almost to a positive quality. Notwithstanding, or, perhaps, in consequence of, this deficiency, he deals largely in general reflections; which accordingly are of the barrenest; when true, so true that no one ever thought them false; when false, nowise that kind of false propositions which come from a penetrating but partial or hasty glance at the thing spoken of, and, therefore, though not true, have instructive truth in them; but such as a country-gentleman, accustomed to be king of his company, talks after dinner. The same want of power manifests itself in the narrative. Telling his story almost entirely after Mignet and Thiers,[*] he has caught none of their vivacity from those great masters of narration; the most stirring scenes of that mighty world-drama, under his pen turn flat, cold, and spiritless. In his preface he apologizes for the “dramatic air” produced by inserting fragments of speeches into his text:[†] if the fact were so, it would be a subject of praise, not of apology; but if it were an offence, we assure Mr. Alison that he never would be found guilty of it; nothing is dramatic which has passed through the strainer of his translations; even the eloquence of Mirabeau cannot rouse within him one spark of kindred energy and fervour. In the humbler duties of a historian he is equally deficient; he has no faculty of historical criticism, and no research; his marginal references point exclusively to the most obvious sources of information; and even among these he refers five times to a compilation, for once to an original authority. In this he evinces a candour worthy of praise, since his crowded margin betrays that scantiness of reading which other authors leave theirs blank on purpose to conceal. We suspect he has written his book rather from memory and notes than with the works themselves before him; Edition: current; Page: [117] else how happens it that he invariably misspells the name of one of the writers, he oftenest refers to?* why are several of the names which occur in the history, also misspelt, in a manner not to be accounted for by the largest allowance for typographical errors? why are there so many inaccuracies in matter of fact, of minor importance indeed, but which could hardly have been fallen into, by one fresh from the reading of even the common histories of the Revolution? The very first and simplest requisite for a writer of French history, a knowledge of the French language, Mr. Alison does not possess in the necessary perfection. To feel the higher excellences of expression and style in any language implies a mastery over the language itself, and a familiarity with its literature, far greater than is sufficent for all inferior purposes. We are sure that any one who can so completely fail to enter into the spirit of Mirabeau’s famous “Dites-lui que ces hordes étrangères dont nous sommes investis,”[*] of that inspired burst of oratory upon la hideuse banqueroute,[†] and of almost everything having any claim to eloquence which he attempts to render, must be either without the smallest real feeling of eloquence, or so inadequately conversant with the French language, that French eloquence has not yet found its way to his soul. We are the more willing to give Mr. Alison the benefit of this excuse, as we find his knowledge of French at fault in far smaller things. He mistakes l’impôt du timbre for a tax on timber; fourche, apparently from not understanding what it is, he translates a fork, and chariot a chariot. The waggoner Cathelineau he terms a charioteer, and the victims of the revolutionary tribunal are carried from the prison to the guillotine in a chariot. Mr. Alison might with as much reason call the dead-cart, during the plague of London, by that name.

If our sole object were to declare our opinion of Mr. Alison’s book, our observations might stop here. But Mr. Alison’s subject seems to require of us some further remarks, applicable to the mode in which that subject is treated by English writers generally, as well as by him.

gNow, withoutg entering at present, more than to the extent of a few words, into the hscientifich aspect of the history of the French Revolution, or stopping to define the place which we would assign to it as an event in universal history, we need not fear to declare utterly unqualified for estimating the French Revolution any one who looks upon it as arising from causes peculiarly French, or otherwise than as one turbulent passage in a progressive irevolutioni embracing the whole human race. All political revolutions, not effected by foreign conquest, originate in moral revolutions. The subversion of established institutions is merely one consequence of the previous subversion of established opinions. The jhundredj political revolutions of the last three centuries were but a few outward manifestations of a moral revolution, which dates from the great breaking loose of the human faculties commonly described as the “revival of letters,” and of which the main instrument and agent was the invention of printing. How much of the course of that moral revolution yet remains to be run, or how many political revolutions it will yet generate before it be exhausted, no one can foretell. But it must be the shallowest view of the French Revolution, which can knowk consider it as any thing but a mere lincidentl in a great change in man himself, in his mbeliefm, in his principles of conduct, and therefore in the outward arrangements of society; a change nwhich is but half completed, and which is now in a state of more rapid progress here in England, than any where elsen.

Now if this view be justo, which we must be content for the present to assumeo, surely for an English historian, writing at this particular time concerning the French Revolution, there was something pressing for consideration of greater interest and importance than the degree of praise or blame due to the few individuals who, with more or less pofp consciousness what they were about, happened to be personally implicated in that strife of the elements.

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But also, if, feeling his incapacity for treating history from the scientific point of view, an author thinks fit to confine himself to the qmoralq aspect, surely some less common-place moral result, some more valuable and more striking practical lesson, might admit of being drawn from this extraordinary passage of history, than merely this, that men should beware how they begin a political convulsion, because they never can tell how or when it will end; which happens to be the one solitary general inference, the entire aggregate of the practical wisdom, deduced therefrom in Mr. Alison’s book.

Of such stuff are ordinary rmen’sr moralities composed. Be good, be wise, always do right, take heed what you do, for you know not what may come of it. Does Mr. Alison, or any one, really believe that any human thing, from the fall of man to the last bankruptcy, ever went wrong for want of such maxims as these?

A political convulsion is a fearful thing: granted. Nobody can be assured beforehand what course it will take: we grant that too. What then? No one ought ever to do any thing which has any tendency to bring on a convulsion: is that the principle? But there never was an attempt made to reform any abuse in Church or State, never any denunciation uttered, or mention made of any political or social evil, which had not some such tendency. Whatever excites dissatisfaction with any one of the arrangements of society, brings the danger of a forcible subversion of the entire fabric so much the snearer: doess it follow that there ought to be no censure of any thing which exists? Or is this abstinence, peradventure, to be observed only when the danger is considerable? But that is whenever the evil complained of is considerable; because the greater the evil, the stronger is the desire excited to be freed from it, and because the greatest evils are always those which it is most difficult to get rid of by ordinary means. It would follow, then, that mankind are at liberty to throw off small evils, but not great ones, that the most deeply-seated and fatal diseases of the social system are those which ought to be left for ever without remedy.

Men are not to make it the sole object of their political lives to avoid a revolution, no more than of their natural lives to avoid death. They are to take reasonable care to avert both those contingencies when there is a present danger, but tthey aret not to forbear the pursuit of any worthy object for fear of a mere possibility.

Unquestionably it is possible to do mischief by striving for a larger measure of political reform than the national mind is ripe for; and so forcing on prematurely a struggle between elements, which, by a more gradual progress, might have been brought to harmonize. And every honest and considerate umanu, before he engages Edition: current; Page: [120] in the career of a political reformer, will inquire whether the moral state and intellectual culture of the people are such as to render any great improvement in the management of public affairs possible. But he will inquire too, whether the people are likely ever to be made better, morally or intellectually, without a vpreviousv change in the government. If not, it may still be his duty to strive for such a change at whatever wrisksw.

What decision a perfectly wise man, at the opening of the French Revolution, would have come to upon these several points, he who knows most will be most slow to pronounce. By the Revolution, substantial good has been effected of immense value, at the cost of immediate evil of the most tremendous kind. But it is impossible, with all the light which has been, or probably ever will be, obtained on the subject, to do more than conjecture whether France could have purchased improvement cheaper; whether any course which could have averted the Revolution, would not have done so by arresting all improvement, and barbarizing down the people of France into the condition of Russian boors.

A revolution, which is so ugly a thing, certainly cannot be a very formidable thing, if all is true xthe Toriesx say of it. For, according to them, it has always depended upon the will of some small number of persons, whether there should be a revolution or ynoy. They invariably begin by assuming that great and decisive immediate improvements, with a certainty of subsequent and rapid progress, and the ultimate attainment of all zpracticalz good, may be had by peaceable means at the option of the leading reformers, and that to this they voluntarily prefer civil war and massacre for the sake of marching somewhat more directly and rapidly towards their ultimate ends. Having thus made out a revolution to be so mere a bagatelle, that, except by the extreme of knavery or folly, it may always be kept at a distance; there is little difficulty in proving all revolutionary leaders knaves or fools. But unhappily theirs is no such enviable position; a far other alternative is commonly offered to them. We will hazard the assertion, that there anevera yet happened a political convulsion, originating in the desire of reform, where the choice did not, in the full persuasion of every person concerned, lie between ballb and cnothingc; where the actors in the revolution had not thoroughly made up their minds, that, without a revolution, the enemies of all reform would have the entire ascendency, and that not only there would be no present improvement, but the door would for the future be shut against dalld endeavour towards it.

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Unquestionably, such was the conviction of those who took part in the French Revolution, during its earlier stages. eTheye did fnotf choose the way of blood and violence in preference to the way of peace and discussion. Theirs was the cause of law and order. The States General at Versailles were a body, legally assembled, legally and constitutionally sovereign of the country, and had every right which law and opinion could bestow upon them, to do all that they did. But as soon as they did any thing disagreeable to the king’s courtiers, (at that time they had not even gbegung to make any alterations in the fundamental institutions of the country,) the king and his advisers took steps for appealing to the bayonet. Then, and not till then, the adverse force of an armed people stood forth in defence of the highest constituted authority—the legislature of their country—menaced with illegal violence. The Bastille fell; the popular party became the stronger; and success, which so often is said to be a justification, has here proved the reverse: men who would haveh ranked with Hampden and Sidney, if they had quietly waited to have their throats cut, ibecomei odious monsters because they have been victorious.

We have not now time nor space to discuss the quantum of the guilt which attaches, not to the authors of the Revolution, but to the jsubsequent, to the variousj revolutionary governments, for the crimes of the Revolution. Much was done which could not have been done except by bad men. But whoever examines faithfully and diligently the records of those times, whoever can conceive the circumstances and look into the mindsk of the men who planned and lwhol perpetrated those enormities, will be the more fully convinced, the more he considers the facts, that all which was done had one sole object. That object was, according to the phraseology of the time, to save the Revolution; to msavem it, no matter by what means; to defend it against its irreconcilable enemies, within and without; to prevent the undoing of the whole work, the restoration of all nwhichn had been demolished, and the extermination of all who had been active in demolishing; to keep down the royalists, and drive back the foreign invaders; as the means to these ends to erect all France into a camp, subject the whole French people to the obligations and the arbitrary discipline of a besieged city, and to inflict death, or suffer it with equal readiness—death or any other evil—for the sake of succeeding in the object.

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But nothing of all this is dreamed of in Mr. Alison’s philosophy:[*] he knows not enough, oneither of his professed subject, noro of the universal subject, the nature of man, to have got even thus far, to have made this first step towards understanding what the French Revolution was. In this he is without excuse, for had he been even moderately read in the French literature, psubsequentp to the Revolution, he would have found this view of the details of its history familiar to every writer and to every reader.a

It was scarcely worth while to touch upon the French Revolution for the sake of saying no more about it than we have now said; yet it is as much, perhaps, as the occasion warrants. Observations entering more deeply into the subject will find a fitter opportunity when it shall not be necessary to mix them up with strictures upon an insignificant book.

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THE MONSTER TRIAL 1835

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EDITOR’S NOTE

Monthly Repository, n.s. IX (June, 1835), 393-6. Headed by title. Running titles as title. Signed “A.” Not republished. Identified in Mill’s bibliography as “An article headed ‘The Monster Trial’ in the Monthly Repository for June 1835” (MacMinn, 44). The copy (tear-sheets) in Mill’s library, Somerville College, headed in Mill’s hand, “From the Monthly Repository for June 1835”, has no corrections or emendations. In the Somerville College copy of the Examiner for 26 Jan., 1834, from which Mill here quotes, there is one correction, “institution” for “constitution” (127:18), which is here accepted.

The long quotation from Mill’s own unheaded leader in the Examiner is collated with the original. In the footnoted variants, “34” indicates the Examiner.

For comment on the essay, see lx-lxii and xcvii-xcviii above.

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The Monster Trial

so little is the general course of French affairs attended to in this country, that when, as at present, some single event, either from its importance or its strangeness, attracts a certain degree of notice, its causes, and all which could help to explain it, have been forgotten. It is true that the most assiduous reader of only the English newspapers, even if he retained all he had read, would understand little or nothing of the real character of events in France, for the editors of the English newspapers are as ignorant of France as they probably are of Monomotapa; and their Paris correspondents, being mostly Frenchmen, write as if for Frenchmen, and repeat the mere gossip of the day, pre-supposing as already known all which Englishmen would care to know. By being the solitary exception to this rule, the writer who signed “O.P.Q.”[*] in the Morning Chronicle gained a temporary popularity, merely because, unlike the rest of the fraternity, he assumed that his readers knew nothing, and had to learn everything. In the Examiner alone, for the last four years, those who take interest in the fate of that great country, which divides with ourselves the moral dominion of Europe, have had the passing events placed carefully before them with regular explanatory comments.[†]

From that paper we quote part of an article which appeared on the 26th January, 1834, descriptive of the character and objects of that portion of the French republicans against whom the procès-monstre[‡] is mainly directed.

The Société des Droits de l’Homme is at present the hobgoblin or bugbear of the juste milieu. The language and manner of the partisans of Louis Philippe with respect to that association are a curious medley of affected contempt and intense personal hatred, not without an admixture of fear. They are constantly and studiously imputing to the members of the society the absurdest opinions and the most criminal purposes, they are incessantly averring, with a degree of emphasis which betrays a lurking doubt, that those opinions and purposes are abhorred by the French people, and that the society has not, and never will have, the support of any class whatever, even the lowest. Yet, in the very same breath in which they declare it to be harmless by reason of its insignificance, they proclaim it so mischievous and so formidable, that society is certain to perish unless it be put down, by whatever means.

In truth, the alarmists are equally wrong in both feelings, whether the feelings be sincere or affected. This much-talked-of association is not to be despised; neither, on the other Edition: current; Page: [126] hand, is it to be feared. It does not aim at subverting society, and society would be too strong for it if it did. Were we to believe some people, the edifice of society is so tottering, and its foundations so unstable, that a breath is enough to blow it down; nay, there cannot be any stir in the surrounding atmosphere, nor any knocking upon the ground, without its certain destruction. But we have another idea of society than this; for us it is something more steady and solid than a house of cards. The evil we are apprehensive of is stagnation, not movement; we can anticipate nothing in the present age but good, from the severest, from even the most hostile scrutiny of the first principles of the social union. Instead of expecting society to fall to pieces, our fear is lest (the old creeds, which formerly gave to the established order of things a foundation in men’s consciences, having become obsolete) the fabric should mechanically hold together by the mere instinctive action of men’s immediate personal interests, without any basis of moral conviction at all. Rather than see this we should prefer to see the whole of the working classes speculatively Owenites or Saint Simonians. We are not frightened at anti-property doctrines. We have no fear that they should ever prevail so extensively as to be dangerous. But we have the greatest fear lest the classes possessed of property should degenerate more and more into selfish, unfeeling Sybarites, receiving from society all that society can give, and rendering it no service in return, content to let the numerical majority remain sunk in mental barbarism and physical destitution. . . .a

The bSociety of the Rights of Manb some months ago embodied their principles on the subject of property in the form of a manifesto, along with which they republished, as a compendium of their opinions, a Declaration of the Rights of Man,[*] which was proposed by Robespierre to the National Convention to be prefixed to their republican constitution,[†] and was by that body rejected. The name of Robespierre was well calculated to excite a prejudice against this document, but any thing more harmless than its contents can scarcely be conceived Such, however, was not the impression of the Parisian public. The writer of this was at Paris when the document made its appearance, and he well remembers his Edition: current; Page: [127] astonishment at the nature and intensity of the sentiments it appeared to excite. Those who did not deem it too contemptible to be formidable were filled with consternation. The Government party, the Carlists, the Liberals, were unanimous in crying anarchy and confusion: even Republicans shook their heads and said, “This is going too far.” And what does the reader imagine was the proposition which appeared so startling and so alarming to all parties? It was no other than the definition which, in the Robespierrian declaration of rights, was given of the “right of property,” and ran as follows.

“The right of property is the right which every one possesses of using and enjoying the portion of wealth which is guaranteed to him by the law.” (La portion de biens qui lui est garantie par la loi.)[*]

Such is the superstitious, or rather idolatrous, character of the respect for property in France, that this proposition actually appeared an alarming heresy, was denounced with the utmost acrimony by all the enemies of the propounders, and timidly and hesitatingly excused rather than vindicated by their friends. The maxim was evidently too much for all parties, it was a doctrine considerably in advance of them, even republicans required some time to make up their minds. Ardent revolutionists, men who were ready to take up arms at five minutes’ notice for the subversion of the existing dynasty, doubted whether they could admit, as a speculative truth, that property is not of natural right, but of human institution, and is the creature of law. Truly, there is little fear for the safety of property in France. We believe that in no country in the world, not even the United States of America, is property so secure, the most violent convulsion would not endanger it; in a country where nearly two-thirds of the male adult population possess property in land, and where the notions entertained of the inviolability of property are so pedantic and (if we may be permitted the expression) so prudish, that there are persons who will gravely maintain that the state has no right to make a road through a piece of land without the owner’s consent, even on payment of compensation.

Strange as it may appear, in the declaration of rights, drawn up by Robespierre, and adopted by the Société des Droits de l’Homme, there is not, with the one exception which we have mentioned, one single proposition on the subject of property which was considered exceptionable even by those who were so scandalized at the above definition. No limitation of the right of property was hinted at; no new or alarming maxim promulgated, unless such be implied in the recognition of the principle of the English poor laws, that society is bound to provide subsistence and work for its indigent members;[†] and this document was rejected by the convention, by the body which put to death Louis XVI, and created the revolutionary tribunal, rejected by that body as anarchical. Yet there are people who believe that the principle of the French revolution was spoliation of property! For the thousandth time, we say to the English Tories and Whigs, that they are as utterly ignorant of the French revolution as of the revolutions among the inhabitants of the moon. Acts of injustice were done; rights, which really partook of the nature of property, were not always treated as such; but the respect of the revolutionary assemblies for all that they considered as entitled to the name of property amounted to actual narrowness and bigotry. We do not affirm this solely of the comparatively moderate and enlightened men who composed the constituent assembly, but in even a greater degree of the violent revolutionists of the convention, to whose obtuser and less cultivated intellects such a prejudice was more natural. In the height of the reign of terror anti-property doctrines would have been scouted, even more decidedly than now; no one dared avow them for fear of the guillotine; nor do Edition: current; Page: [128] such doctrines figure in the history of the revolution at all, save in the solitary instance of the conspiracy of Baboeuf, greatly posterior to the fall of Robespierre and the Montagne.c[*]

In April, 1834, about three months after the above article was written, the leaders in a general strike of the silk-weavers of Lyons, which had just terminated unsuccessfully, were prosecuted by order of government; and this prosecution, together with the knowledge that the detestable law[†] then in progress through the Chambers for putting down all associations unlicensed by government would be applied to the extinction of trades’ unions, provoked the unfortunate insurrection at Lyons, which lasted five days, and was with some difficulty suppressed. This was not a political, but a trades’ union insurrection. The government, however, took that base advantage of the alarm excited by it which all French governments have long been accustomed to take of all events exciting a panic among those who have something to lose. They got up an insignificant riot in the streets of Paris, called it an insurrection, took the most violent measures for repressing it, (a house was broken open, and all the inhabitants, twenty or thirty in number, butchered by the troops,) and availed themselves of the excuse for seizing the persons and papers of all the leading members of the Société des Droits de l’Homme.[‡] Not one of those leaders was even suspected of being concerned in either of the two insurrections, but the opportunity was thought a good one for laying, under colour of law, the clutches of the government upon the correspondence of the society. It is now a year that these distinguished persons have been kept in prison; and that time has been employed in manufacturing, from the papers which government got into its possession, evidence of a plot. The next desideratum was, to bring the prisoners before a tribunal which would be sure to convict them. Paris juries had been tried, Edition: current; Page: [129] and found not sufficiently docile. They had always scouted the miserable attempts to hunt down innocent men on charges of treason and conspiracy; and memorable had been the exposure, on more than one such occasion, of the malignant and fraudulent artifices of the government. There was, however, a resource. In servile imitation of the English constitution, the Chamber of Peers had been, by the French charter, invested with the power of trying ministers for treason or malversation on the prosecution of the Chamber of Deputies.[*] This provision Louis Philippe, following a questionable precedent of Louis XVIII’s reign, has applied to the case of persons who are not ministers, nor prosecuted by the Chamber of Deputies; and has brought the pretended authors of the pretended republican conspiracy of Paris, along with the presumed authors of the real trades’ union revolt at Lyons, before the Chamber of Peers, that is, before a body named by the government, and mostly holding places under it.

Nothing can denote more complete ignorance of France than the daily speculations in our liberal newspapers as to the embarrassments which the Chamber of Peers is supposed to have brought upon itself by consenting to be made the tool of the government in this matter, and the loss it is likely to sustain in public estimation. The Chamber of Peers is so happily situated, that it cannot possibly suffer any loss of public estimation; any change on that score must be to its advantage. It is as completely insignificant as our House of Lords would be if it were a body of mere pensioners, not hereditary, containing as little talent as at present, and scarcely any fortune. The Chamber of Peers, previously to this trial, was heartily despised. It may now attain the more honourable, and, to a Frenchman especially, far more enviable position of being hated. By showing that it has still the power (in spite of the imbecility inherent in its constitution) of making itself formidable as an instrument of tyranny in the hands of the other two branches of the legislature, it may have a chance, which it certainly had not before, of regaining a certain sort of consideration. The Monster Trial is its last throw for political importance.

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CARLYLE’S FRENCH REVOLUTION 1837

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EDITOR’S NOTE

London and Westminster Review, V & XXVII (July, 1837), 17-53. Headed: “The French Revolution: A History. In three volumes. By Thomas Carlyle. Small 8vo. [London:] Fraser, 1837.” Running titles: “The French Revolution.” Signed “A.” Not republished. Identified in Mill’s bibliography as “A review of Carlyle’s History of the French Revolution, in the same review [as ‘Taylor’s Statesman,’ by Mill and George Grote] for July 1837. (No. 10 and 53.)” (MacMinn, 48.) The copy (bound sheets) in Mill’s library. Somerville College, has no corrections or emendations.

In the extensive quotations, the footnotes that Mill takes from Carlyle are signalled by “[TC].”

For comment, see l-lv and xcix-c above.

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Carlyle’s French Revolution

this is not so much a history, as an epic poem; and notwithstanding, or even in consequence of this, the truest of histories. It is the history of the French Revolution, and the poetry of it, both in one; and on the whole no work of greater genius, either historical or poetical, has been produced in this country for many years.

It is a book on which opinion will be for some time divided; nay, what talk there is about it, while it is still fresh, will probably be oftenest of a disparaging sort; as indeed is usually the case, both with men’s works and with men themselves, of distinguished originality. For a thing which is unaccustomed, must be a very small thing indeed, if mankind can at once see into it and be sure that it is good: when, therefore, a considerable thing, which is also an unaccustomed one, appears, those who will hereafter approve, sit silent for a time, making up their minds; and those only to whom the mere novelty is a sufficient reason for disapproval, speak out. We need not fear to prophesy that the suffrages of a large class of the very best qualified judges will be given, even enthusiastically, in favour of the volumes before us; but we will not affect to deny that the sentiment of another large class of readers (among whom are many entitled to the most respectful attention on other subjects) will be far different; a class comprehending all who are repelled by quaintness of manner. For a style more peculiar than that of Mr. Carlyle, more unlike the jog-trot characterless uniformity which distinguishes the English style of this age of Periodicals, does not exist. Nor indeed can this style be wholly defended even by its admirers. Some of its peculiarities are mere mannerisms, arising from some casual association of ideas, or some habit accidentally picked up; and what is worse, many sterling thoughts are so disguised in phraseology borrowed from the spiritualist school of German poets and metaphysicians, as not only to obscure the meaning, but to raise, in the minds of most English readers, a not unnatural nor inexcusable presumption of there being no meaning at all. Nevertheless, the presumption fails in this instance (as in many other instances); there is not only a meaning, but generally a true, and even a profound meaning; and, although a few dicta about the “mystery” and the “infinitude”[*] which are in the universe and in man, and such like topics, are repeated in varied phrases greatly too often for our taste, this must be borne with, proceeding, as one cannot but see, Edition: current; Page: [134] from feelings the most solemn, and the most deeply rooted which can lie in the heart of a human being. These transcendentalisms, and the accidental mannerisms excepted, we pronounce the style of this book to be not only good, but of surpassing excellence; excelled, in its kind, only by the great masters of epic poetry; and a most suitable and glorious vesture for a work which is itself, as we have said, an epic poem.

To any one who is perfectly satisfied with the best of the existing histories, it will be difficult to explain wherein the merit of Mr. Carlyle’s book consists. If there be a person who, in reading the histories of Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon (works of extraordinary talent, and the works of great writers)[*] has never felt that this, after all, is not history—and that the lives and deeds of his fellow-creatures must be placed before him in quite another manner, if he is to know them, or feel them to be real beings, who once were alive, beings of his own flesh and blood, not mere shadows and dim abstractions; such a person, for whom plausible talk about a thing does as well as an image of the thing itself, feels no need of a book like Mr. Carlyle’s; the want, which it is peculiarly fitted to supply, does not yet consciously exist in his mind. That such a want, however, is generally felt, may be inferred from the vast number of historical plays and historical romances, which have been written for no other purpose than to satisfy it. Mr. Carlyle has been the first to shew that all which is done for history by the best historical play, by Schiller’s Wallenstein,[†] for example, or Vitet’s admirable trilogy,* may be done in a strictly true narrative, in which every incident rests on irrefragable authority; may be done, by means merely of an apt selection and a judicious grouping of authentic facts.

It has been noted as a point which distinguishes Shakespeare from ordinary dramatists, that their characters are logical abstractions, his are human beings: that their kings are nothing but kings, their lovers nothing but lovers, their patriots, Edition: current; Page: [135] courtiers, villains, cowards, bullies, are each of them that, and that alone; while his are real men and women, who have these qualities, but have them in addition to their full share of all other qualities (not incompatible), which are incident to human nature.[*] In Shakespeare, consequently, we feel we are in a world of realities; we are among such beings as really could exist, as do exist, or have existed, and as we can sympathise with; the faces we see around us are human faces, and not mere rudiments of such, or exaggerations of single features. This quality, so often pointed out as distinctive of Shakespeare’s plays, distinguishes Mr. Carlyle’s history. Never before did we take up a book calling itself by that name, a book treating of past times, and professing to be true, and find ourselves actually among human beings. We at once felt, that what had hitherto been to us mere abstractions, had become realities; the “forms of things unknown,” which we fancied we knew, but knew their names merely, were, for the first time, with most startling effect, “bodied forth” and “turned into shape.”[†] Other historians talk to us indeed of human beings; but what do they place before us? Not even stuffed figures of such, but rather their algebraical symbols; a few phrases, which present no image to the fancy, but by adding up the dictionary meanings of which, we may hunt out a few qualities, not enough to form even the merest outline of what the men were, or possibly could have been; furnishing little but a canvas, which, if we ourselves can paint, we may fill with almost any picture, and if we cannot, it will remain for ever blank.

Take, for example, Hume’s history; certainly, in its own way, one of the most skilful specimens of narrative in modern literature, and with some pretensions also to philosophy. Does Hume throw his own mind into the mind of an Anglo-Saxon, or an Anglo-Norman? Does any reader feel, after having read Hume’s history, that he can now picture to himself what human life was, among the Anglo-Saxons? how an Anglo-Saxon would have acted in any supposable case? what were his joys, his sorrows, his hopes and fears, his ideas and opinions on any of the great and small matters of human interest? Would not the sight, if it could be had, of a single table or pair of shoes made by an Anglo-Saxon, tell us, directly and by inference, more of his whole way of life, more of how men thought and acted among the Anglo-Saxons, than Hume, with all his narrative skill, has contrived to tell us from all his materials?

Or descending from the history of civilization, which in Hume’s case may have been a subordinate object, to the history of political events: did any one ever gain from Hume’s history anything like a picture of what may actually have been passing, in the minds, say, of Cavaliers or of Roundheads during the civil wars? Does any one feel that Hume has made him figure to himself with any precision Edition: current; Page: [136] what manner of men these were; how far they were like ourselves, how far different; what things they loved and hated, and what sort of conception they had formed of the things they loved and hated? And what kind of a notion can be framed of a period of history, unless we begin with that as a preliminary? Hampden, and Strafford, and Vane, and Cromwell, do these, in Hume’s pages, appear to us like beings who actually trod this earth, and spoke with a human voice, and stretched out human hands in fellowship with other human beings; or like the figures in a phantasmagoria, colourless, impalpable, gigantic, and in all varieties of attitude, but all resembling one another in being shadows? And suppose he had done his best to assist us in forming a conception of these leading characters: what would it have availed, unless he had placed us also in the atmosphere which they breathed? What wiser are we for looking out upon the world through Hampden’s eyes, unless it be the same world which Hampden looked upon? and what help has Hume afforded us for this? Has he depicted to us, or to himself, what all the multitude of people were about, who surrounded Hampden; what the whole English nation were feeling, thinking, or doing? Does he shew us what impressions from without were coming to Hampden—what materials and what instruments were given him to work with? If not, we are well qualified, truly, from Hume’s information, to erect ourselves into judges of any part of Hampden’s conduct!

Another very celebrated historian, we mean Gibbon—not a man of mere science and analysis, like Hume, but with some (though not the truest or profoundest) artistic feeling of the picturesque, and from whom, therefore, rather more might have been expected—has with much pains succeeded in producing a tolerably graphic picture of here and there a battle, a tumult, or an insurrection; his book is full of movement and costume, and would make a series of very pretty ballets at the Opera-house, and the ballets would give us fully as distinct an idea of the Roman empire, and how it declined and fell, as the book does. If we want that, we must look for it anywhere but in Gibbon. One touch of M. Guizot removes a portion of the veil which hid from us the recesses of private life under the Roman empire, lets in a ray of light which penetrates as far even as the domestic hearth of a subject of Rome, and shews us the government at work making that desolate;[*] but no similar gleam of light from Gibbon’s mind ever reaches the subject; human life, in the times he wrote about, is not what he concerned himself with.

On the other hand, there are probably many among our readers who are acquainted (though it is not included in Coleridge’s admirable translation) with that extraordinary piece of dramatic writing, termed “Wallenstein’s Camp.”[†]Edition: current; Page: [137] One of the greatest of dramatists, the historian of the Thirty Years’ War,[*] aspired to do, in a dramatic fiction, what even his genius had not enabled him to do in his history—to delineate the great characters, and, above all, to embody the general spirit of that period. This is done with such life and reality through ten acts, that the reader feels when it is over as if all the prominent personages in the play were people whom he had known from his childhood; but the author did not trust to this alone: he prefixed to the ten acts, one introductory act, intended to exhibit, not the characters, but the element they moved in. It is there, in this preliminary piece, that Schiller really depicts the Thirty Years’ War; without that, even the other ten acts, splendid as they are, would not have sufficiently realized it to our conception, nor would the Wallensteins and Piccolominis and Terzskys of that glorious tragedy have been themselves, comparatively speaking, intelligible.

What Schiller must have done, in his own mind, with respect to the age of Wallenstein, to enable him to frame that fictitious delineation of it. Mr. Carlyle, with a mind which looks still more penetratingly into the deeper meanings of things than Schiller’s, has done with respect to the French Revolution. And he has communicated his picture of it with equal vividness; but he has done it by means of real, not fictitious incidents. And therefore is his book, as we said, at once the authentic History and the Poetry of the French Revolution.

It is indeed a favourite doctrine of Mr. Carlyle, and one which he has enforced with great strength of reason and eloquence in other places, that all poetry suitable to the present age must be of this kind:[†] that poetry has not naturally any thing to do with fiction, nor is fiction in these days even the most appropriate vehicle and vesture of it; that it should, and will, employ itself more and more, not in inventing unrealities, but in bringing out into ever greater distinctness and impressiveness the poetic aspect of realities. For what is it, in the fictitious subjects which poets usually treat, that makes those subjects poetical? Surely not the dry, mechanical facts which compose the story; but the feelings—the high and solemn, the tender or mournful, even the gay and mirthful contemplations, which the story, or the manner of relating it, awaken in our minds. But would not all these thoughts and feelings be far more vividly aroused if the facts were believed, if the men, and all that is ascribed to them, had actually been; if the whole were no play of imagination, but a truth? In every real fact, in which any of the great interests of human beings are implicated, there lie the materials of all poetry; there is, as Mr. Carlyle has said, the fifth act of a tragedy in every peasant’s death-bed;[‡] the life of every heroic character is a heroic poem, were but the man of genius found, who could so write it! Not falsification of the reality is wanted, not the representation of it as being any thing which it is not; only a deeper understanding of what it is; the Edition: current; Page: [138] power to conceive, and to represent, not the mere outside surface and costume of the thing, nor yet the mere logical definition, and caput mortuum of it—but an image of the thing itself in the concrete, with all that is loveable or hateable or admirable or pitiable or sad or solemn or pathetic, in it, and in the things which are implied in it. That is, the thing must be presented as it can exist only in the mind of a great poet: of one gifted with the two essential elements of the poetic character—creative imagination, which, from a chaos of scattered hints and confused testimonies, can summon up the Thing to appear before it as a completed whole: and that depth and breadth of feeling which makes all the images that are called up appear arrayed in whatever, of all that belongs to them, is naturally most affecting and impressive to the human soul.

We do not envy the person who can read Mr. Carlyle’s three volumes, and not recognize in him both these endowments in a most rare and remarkable degree. What is equally important to be said—he possesses in no less perfection that among the qualities necessary for his task, seemingly the most opposite to these, and in which the man of poetic imagination might be thought likeliest to be deficient; the quality of the historical day-drudge. A more pains-taking or accurate investigator of facts, and sifter of testimonies, never wielded the historical pen. We do not say this at random, but from a most extensive acquaintance with his materials, with his subject, and with the mode in which it has been treated by others.

Thus endowed, and having a theme the most replete with every kind of human interest, epic, tragic, elegiac, even comic and farcical, which history affords, and so near to us withal, that the authentic details of it are still attainable; need it be said, that he has produced a work which deserves to be memorable? a work which, whatever may be its immediate reception, “will not willingly be let die;”[*] whose reputation will be a growing reputation, its influence rapidly felt, for it will be read by the writers; and perhaps every historical work of any note, which shall hereafter be written in this country, will be different from what it would have been if this book were not.

The book commences with the last illness of Louis XV which is introduced as follows:

President Hénault, remarking on royal Surnames of Honour how difficult it often is to ascertain not only why, but even when, they were conferred, takes occasion in his sleek official way to make a philosophical reflection. “The Surname of Bien-aimé (Well-beloved),” says he, “which Louis XV bears, will not leave posterity in the same doubt. This Prince, in the year 1744, while hastening from one end of his kingdom to the other, and suspending his conquests in Flanders that he might fly to the assistance of Alsace, was Edition: current; Page: [139] arrested at Metz by a malady which threatened to cut short his days. At the news of this, Paris, all in terror, seemed a city taken by storm: the churches resounded with supplications and groans; the prayers of priests and people were every moment interrupted by their sobs; and it was from an interest so dear and tender that this Surname of Bien-aimé fashioned itself, a title higher still than all the rest which this great Prince has earned.”*

So stands it written; in lasting memorial of that year 1744. Thirty other years have come and gone; and “this great Prince” again lies sick; but in how altered circumstances now! Churches resound not with excessive groanings, Paris is stoically calm, sobs interrupt no prayers, for indeed none are offered, except Priests’ Litanies, read or chanted at fixed money-rate per hour, which are not liable to interruption. The shepherd of the people has been carried home from Little Trianon, heavy of heart, and been put to bed in his own Château of Versailles: the flock knows it, and heeds it not. At most, in the immeasurable tide of French Speech (which ceases not day after day, and only ebbs towards the short hours of night), may this of the royal sickness emerge from time to time as an article of news. Bets are doubtless depending, nay some people “express themselves loudly in the streets.”† But for the rest, on green field and steepled city, the May sun shines out, the May evening fades, and men ply their useful or useless business as if no Louis lay in danger.[*]

The loathsome deathbed of the royal debauchee becomes, under Mr. Carlyle’s pencil, the central figure in an historical picture, including all France: bringing before us, as it were visibly, all the spiritual and physical elements which there existed, and made up the sum of what might be termed the influences of the age. In this picture, and in that of the “Era of Hope” (as Mr. Carlyle calls the first years of Louis XVI,)[†] there is much that we would gladly quote. But on the whole we think these introductory chapters the least interesting part of the book; less distinguished by their intrinsic merit, and more so by all the peculiarities of manner which either are really defects, or appear so. These chapters will only have justice done them on a second reading, once familiarized with the author’s characteristic turn of thought and expression, we find many passages full of meaning, which, to unprepared minds, would convey a very small portion, if any, of the sense which they are not only intended, but are in themselves admirably calculated to express, for the finest expression is not always that which is the most readily apprehended. The real character of the book, however, begins only to display itself when the properly narrative portion commences. This, however, is more or less the case with all histories, though seldom to so conspicuous an extent.

The stream of the narrative acquires its full speed about the hundred and sixty-fifth page, and the beginning of the fourth book. The introductory rapid sketch of what may be called the coming-on of the Revolution, is then ended, and Edition: current; Page: [140] we are arrived at the calling together of the States General. The fourth book, first chapter, opens as follows:

The universal prayer, therefore, is to be fulfilled! Always in days of national perplexity, when wrong abounded and help was not, this remedy of States General was called for; by a Malesherbes, nay by a Fénélon:* even Parlements calling for it were “escorted with blessings.”[*] And now behold it is vouchsafed us, States General shall verily be!

To say, let States General be, was easy; to say in what manner they shall be, is not so easy. Since the year 1614, there have no States General met in France, all trace of them has vanished from the living habits of men. Their structure, powers, methods of procedure, which were never in any measure fixed, have now become wholly a vague Possibility. Clay which the potter may shape, this way or that:—say rather, the twenty-five millions of potters; for so many have now, more or less, a vote in it! How to shape the States General? There is a problem. Each Body-corporate, each privileged, each organised Class has secret hopes of its own in that matter; and also secret misgivings of its own,—for, behold, this monstrous twenty-million Class, hitherto the dumb sheep which these others had to agree about the manner of shearing, is now also arising with hopes! It has ceased or is ceasing to be dumb; it speaks through Pamphlets, or at least brays and growls behind them, in unison,—increasing wonderfully their volume of sound.

As for the Parlement of Paris, it has at once declared for the “old form of 1614.” Which form had this advantage, that the Tiers Etat, Third Estate, or Commons, figured there as a show mainly, whereby the Noblesse and Clergy had but to avoid quarrel between themselves, and decide unobstructed what they thought best. Such was the clearly declared opinion of the Paris Parlement. But, being met by a storm of mere hooting and howling from all men, such opinion was blown straightway to the winds; and the popularity of the Parlement along with it,—never to return. The Parlement’s part, we said above, was as good as played. Concerning which, however, there is this further to be noted, the proximity of dates. It was on the 22nd of September that the Parlement returned from “vacation” or “exile in its estates;” to be reinstalled amid boundless jubilee from all Paris. Precisely next day, it was that this same Parlement came to its “clearly declared opinion:” and then on the morrow after that, you behold it “covered with outrages;” its outer court, one vast sibilation, and the glory departed from it for evermore.† A popularity of twenty-four hours was, in those times, no uncommon allowance.

On the other hand, how superfluous was that invitation of Lornénie, the invitation to thinkers! Thinkers and unthinkers, by the million, are spontaneously at their post, doing what is in them. Clubs labour: Société Publicole; Breton Club; Enraged Club, Club des Enragés. Likewise dinner-parties in the Palais Royal; your Mirabeaus, Talleyrands dining there, in company with Chamforts, Morellets, with Duponts and hot Parlementeers, not without object! For a certain Neckerean lion’s-provider, whom one could name, assembles them there;‡—or even their own private determination to have dinner does it. And then as to pamphlets—in figurative language, “it is a sheer snowing of pamphlets; like to snow up the Government thoroughfares!”[†] Now is the time for friends of freedom; sane, and even insane.

Edition: current; Page: [141]

Count, or self-styled Count, d’Aintraigues, “the young Languedocian gentleman,” with perhaps Chamfort the Cynic to help him, rises into furor almost Pythic; highest, where many are high.* Foolish young Languedocian gentleman, who himself so soon, “emigrating among the foremost,” must fly indignant over the marches, with the Contrat Social[*] in his pocket,—towards outer darkness, thankless intriguings, ignis-fatuus hoverings, and death by the stiletto! Abbé Sieyès has left Chartres Cathedral, and canonry and book-shelves there; has let his tonsure grow, and come to Paris with a secular head, of the most irrefragable sort, to ask three questions, and answer them. What is the Third Estate? All. What has it hitherto been in our form of government? Nothing. What does it want? To become something.[†]

D’Orleans, for be sure he, on his way to Chaos, is in the thick of this,—promulgates his Deliberations;† fathered by him, written by Laclos of the Liaisons Dangereuses.[‡] The result of which comes out simply. “The Third Estate is the Nation.”[§] On the other hand, Monseigneur d’Artois, with other Princes of the Blood, publishes, in solemn Memorial to the King, that, if such things be listened to, Privilege, Nobility, Monarchy, Church, State, and Strongbox are in danger.‡ In danger truly: and yet if you do not listen, are they out of danger? It is the voice of all France, this sound that rises. Immeasurable, manifold, as the sound of outbreaking waters: wise were he who knew what to do in it,—if not to fly to the mountains, and hide himself!

How an ideal, all-seeing Versailles Government, sitting there on such principles, in such an environment, would have determined to demean itself at this new juncture; may even yet be a question. Such a Government had felt too well that its long task was now drawing to a close, that, under the guise of these States General, at length inevitable, a new omnipotent Unknown of Democracy was coming into being, in presence of which no Versailles Government either could or should, except in a provisory character, continue extant. To enact which provisory character, so unspeakably important, might its whole faculties but have sufficed; and so a peaceable, gradual, well-conducted Abdication and Dominedimittas have been the issue!

This for our ideal, all-seeing Versailles Government. But for the actual irrational Versailles Government? Alas! that is a Government existing there only for its own behoof, without right, except possession, and now also without might. It foresees nothing, sees nothing; has not so much as a purpose, but has only purposes,—and the instinct whereby all that exists will struggle to keep existing. Wholly a vortex, in which vain counsels, Edition: current; Page: [142] hallucinations, falsehoods, intrigues, and imbecilities whirl; like withered rubbish in the meeting of winds! The Oeil-de-Boeuf has its irrational hopes, if also its fears. Since hitherto all States General have done as good as nothing, why should these do more? The Commons indeed look dangerous; but on the whole is not revolt, unknown now for five generations, an impossibility? The Three Estates can, by management, be set against each other; the Third will, as heretofore, join with the King, will, out of mere spite and self-interest, be eager to tax and vex the other two. The other two are thus delivered bound into our hands, that we may fleece them likewise. Whereupon, money being got, and the Three Estates all in quarrel, dismiss them, and let the future go as it can! As good Archbishop Loménie was wont to say: “There are so many accidents; and it needs but one to save us.”—How many to destroy us?

Poor Necker in the midst of such an anarchy does what is possible for him. He looks into it with obstinately hopeful face; lauds the known rectitude of the kingly mind; listens indulgent-like to the known perverseness of the queenly and courtly;—emits if any proclamation or regulation, one favouring the Tiers Etat; but settling nothing; hovering afar off rather, and advising all things to settle themselves. . . .[*]

But so, at least, by Royal Edict of the 24th of January,* does it finally, to impatient expectant France, become not only indubitable that national deputies are to meet, but possible (so far and hardly further has the royal regulation gone) to begin electing them.[†]

The next Chapter is “The Election.”

Up then, and be doing! The royal signal-word flies through France, as through vast forests the rushing of a mighty wind. At Parish Churches, in Townhalls, and every House of Convocation; by Bailliages, by Seneschalsies, in whatsoever form men convene, there, with confusion enough, are primary assemblies forming. To elect your electors; such is the form prescribed: then to draw up your “Writ of Plaints and Grievances (Cahier de plaintes et doléances),” of which latter there is no lack.

With such virtue works this Royal January Edict; as it rolls rapidly, in its leathern mails, along these frost-bound highways, towards all the four winds. Like some fiat, or magic spell-word;—which such things do resemble! For always, as it sounds out “at the market-cross,” accompanied with trumpet-blast, presided by Bailli, Seneschal, or other minor functionary, with beefeaters; or, in country churches, is droned forth after sermon, “au prône des messes paroissiales,”[‡] and is registered, posted, and let fly over all the world,—you behold how this multitudinous French people, so long simmering and buzzing in eager expectancy, begins heaping and shaping itself into organic groups. Which organic groups, again, hold smaller organic grouplets: the inarticulate buzzing becomes articulate speaking and acting. By Primary Assembly, and then by Secondary, by “successive elections,” and infinite elaboration and scrutiny, according to prescribed process,—shall the genuine. “Plaints and Grievances” be at length got to paper; shall the fit National Representative be at length laid hold of.

How the whole People shakes itself, as if it had one life, and, in thousand-voiced rumour, Edition: current; Page: [143] announces that it is awake, suddenly out of long death-sleep, and will thenceforth sleep no more![*] The long looked-for has come at last; wondrous news, of victory, deliverance, enfranchisement, sounds magical through every heart. To the proud strong man it has come, whose strong hands shall no more be gyved, to whom boundless unconquered continents lie disclosed. The weary day-drudge has heard of it, the beggar with his crust moistened in tears. What! To us also has hope reached; down even to us? Hunger and hardship are not to be eternal? The bread we extorted from the rugged glebe, and, with the toil of our sinews, reaped and ground, and kneaded into loaves, was not wholly for another, then, but we also shall eat of it, and be filled? Glorious news (answer the prudent elders), but all too unlikely!—Thus, at any rate, may the lower people, who pay no money taxes and have no right to vote,* assiduously crowd round those that do, and most halls of assembly, within doors and without, seem animated enough.[†]

Has the reader often seen the state of an agitated nation made thus present, thus palpable? How the thing paints itself in all its greatness—the men in all their littleness! and this is not done by reasoning about them, but by showing them. The deep pathos of the last paragraph, grand as it is, is but an average specimen, as, indeed, is the whole passage. In the remaining two volumes and a half there are scarcely five consecutive pages of inferior merit to those we have quoted. The few extracts we can venture to make, will be selected, not for peculiarity of merit, but either as forming wholes in themselves, or as depicting events or situations, with which the reader, it may be hoped, is familiar.† For the more he previously knew of the mere outline of the facts, the more he will admire the writer, whose pictorial and truly poetic genius enables him for the first time to fill up the outline.

Our last extract was an abridged sketch of the State of a Nation: the next shall be a copious narrative of a single event: the far-famed Siege of the Bastille. How much every such passage must suffer by being torn from the context, needs scarcely be said; and nothing that could be said, could, in this case, make it adequately felt. The history of the two previous days occupies twenty-two pages, rising from page to page in interest. We begin at noon on the fourteenth of July:

All morning, since nine, there has been a cry every where. To the Bastille! Repeated “deputations of citizens” have been here, passionate for arms; whom de Launay has got Edition: current; Page: [144] dismissed by soft speeches through portholes. Towards noon, Elector Thuriot de la Rosière gains admittance; finds de Launay indisposed for surrender; nay disposed for blowing up the place rather. Thuriot mounts with him to the battlements; heaps of paving-stones, old iron and missiles lie piled; cannon all duly levelled; in every embrasure a cannon,—only drawn back a little! But outwards, behold, O Thuriot, how the multitude flows on, welling through every street; tocsin furiously pealing, all drums beating the générale; the Suburb Saint-Antoine rolling hitherward wholly, as one man! Such vision (spectral yet real) thou, O Thuriot, as from thy Mount of Vision, beholdest in this moment: prophetic of what other Phantasmagories, and loud-gibbering Spectral Realities, which thou yet beholdest not, but shalt! “Que voulez-vous?” said de Launay, turning pale at the sight, with an air of reproach, almost of menace. “Monsieur,” said Thuriot, rising into the moral-sublime, “What mean you? Consider if I could not precipate both of us from this height,”—say only a hundred feet, exclusive of the walled ditch![*] Whereupon de Launay fell silent. Thuriot shews himself from some pinnacle, to comfort the multitude becoming suspicious, fremescent, then descends; departs with protest; with warning addressed also to the Invalides,—on whom, however, it produces but a mixed indistinct impression. The old heads are none of the clearest; besides, it is said, de Launay has been profuse of beverages (prodigua des boissons). They think, they will not fire,—if not fired on, if they can help it; but must, on the whole, be ruled considerably by circumstances.

Wo to thee, de Launay, in such an hour, if thou canst not, taking some one firm decision, rule circumstances! Soft speeches will not serve; hard grape-shot is questionable, but hovering between the two is unquestionable. Ever wilder swells the tide of men; their infinite hum waxing ever louder, into imprecations, perhaps into crackle of stray musketry,—which latter, on walls nine feet thick, cannot do execution. The outer drawbridge has been lowered for Thuriot; new deputation of citizens (it is the third, and noisiest of all) penetrates that way into the outer court: soft speeches producing no clearance of these, de Launay gives fire; pulls up his drawbridge. A slight sputter,—which has kindled the too combustible chaos, made it a roaring fire-chaos! Bursts forth Insurrection, at sight of its own blood (for there were deaths by that sputter of fire), into endless rolling explosion of musketry, distraction, execration;—and over head, from the fortress, let one great gun, with its grape-shot, go booming, to shew what we could do. The Bastille is besieged!

On, then, all Frenchmen that have hearts in their bodies! Roar with all your throats, of cartilage and metal, ye Sons of Liberty; stir spasmodically whatsoever of utmost faculty is in you, soul, body or spirit; for it is the hour! Smite, thou Louis Tournay, cartwright of the Marais, old-soldier of the Regiment Dauphine, smite at that outer drawbridge-chain, though the fiery hail whistles round thee! Never, over nave or felloe, did thy axe strike such a stroke. Down with it, man; down with it to Orcus, let the whole accursed Edifice sink thither, and Tyranny be swallowed up for ever! Mounted, some say on the roof of the guard-room, some “on bayonets stuck into joints of the wall,” Louis Tournay smites, brave Aubin Bonnemère (also an old soldier) seconding him: the chain yields, breaks; the huge drawbridge slams down, thundering (avec fracas).[†] Glorious: and yet, alas, it is still but the outworks. The Eight grim Towers, with their Invalides’ musketry, their paving stones and cannon-mouths, still soar aloft intact;—ditch yawning impassable, stone-faced; the inner drawbridge with its back towards us: the Bastille is still to take!

To describe this siege of the Bastille (thought to be one of the most important in History) perhaps transcends the talent of mortals. Could one but, after infinite reading, get to understand so much as the plan of the building! But there is open Esplanade, at the end of the Edition: current; Page: [145] Rue Saint-Antoine; there are such Forecourts, Cour Avancé, Cour de l’Orme, arched Gateway (where Louis Tournay now fights); then new drawbridges, dormant-bridges, rampart-bastions, and the grim Eight Towers: a labyrinthic mass, high-frowning there, of all ages from twenty years to four hundred and twenty;—beleaguered, in this its last hour, as we said, by mere Chaos come again![*] Ordnance of all calibres; throats of all capacities; men of all plans, every man his own engineer: seldom since the war of Pygmies and Cranes[†] was there seen so anomalous a thing. Half-pay Elie is home for a suit of regimentals; no one would heed him in coloured clothes half-pay. Hulin is haranguing Gardes Françaises in the Place de Grève. Frantic patriots pick up the grape-shots: bear them, still hot (or seemingly so), to the Hôtel-de-Ville:—Paris, you perceive, is to be burnt! Flesselles is “pale to the very lips,” for the roar of the multitude grows deep. Paris wholly has got to the acme of its frenzy; whirled, all ways, by panic madness. At every street-barricade, there whirls simmering, a minor whirlpool,—strengthening the barricade, since God knows what is coming: and all minor whirlpools play distractedly into that grand Fire-Mahlstrom which is lashing round the Bastille.

And so it lashes and it roars. Cholat the wine-merchant has become an impromptu cannoneer. See Georget, of the marine service, fresh from Brest, ply the King of Siam’s cannon.[‡] Singular (if we were not used to the like). Georget lay, last night, taking his ease at his inn;[§] the King of Siam’s cannon also lay, knowing nothing of him, for a hundred years. Yet now, at the right instant, they have got together, and discourse eloquent music. For, hearing what was toward, Georget sprang from the Brest Diligence, and ran. Gardes Françaises also will be here, with real artillery: were not the walls so thick!—Upwards from the Esplanade, horizontally from all neighbouring roofs and windows, flashes one irregular deluge of musketry,—without effect. The Invalides lie flat, firing comparatively at their ease from behind stone; hardly through portholes, shew the tip of a nose. We fall, shot; and make no impression!

Let conflagration rage; of whatsoever is combustible! Guard-rooms are burnt, Invalides’ mess-rooms. A distracted “Perukemaker with two fiery torches” is for burning “the saltpetres of the Arsenal;”[¶]—had not a woman run screaming, had not a Patriot, with some tincture of Natural Philosophy, instantly struck the wind out of him (butt of musket on pit of stomach), overturned barrels, and stayed the devouring element. A young beautiful lady, seized escaping in these Outer Courts, and thought falsely to be de Launay’s daughter, shall be burnt in de Launay’s sight; she lies swooned on a paillasse: but again a Patriot, it is brave Aubin Bonnemère the old soldier, dashes in, and rescues her. Straw is burnt; three cartloads of it, hauled thither, go up in white smoke, almost to the choking of Patriotism itself; so that Elie had, with singed brows, to drag back one cart, and Réole the “gigantic haberdasher” another.[∥] Smoke as of Tophet;[**] confusion as of Babel;[††] noise as of the Crack of Doom![‡‡]

Blood flows; the aliment of new madness. The wounded are carried into houses of the Edition: current; Page: [146] Rue Cerisaie; the dying leave their last mandate not to yield till the accursed Stronghold fall. And yet, alas, how fall? The walls are so thick! Deputations, three in number, arrive from the Hôtel-de-Ville; Abbé Fauchet (who was one) can say, with what almost superhuman courage of benevolence.* These wave their Town-flag in the arched Gateway: and stand, rolling their drum; but to no purpose. In such Crack of Doom, de Launay cannot hear them, dare not believe them: they return, with justified rage, the whew of lead still singing in their ears. What to do? The Firemen are here, squirting with their fire-pumps on the Invalides’ cannon, to wet the touchholes; they unfortunately cannot squirt so high; but produce only clouds of spray. Individuals of classical knowledge propose catapults. Santerre, the sonorous brewer of the suburb Saint-Antoine, advises rather that the place be fired, by a “mixture of phosphorus and oil-of-turpentine spouted up through forcing pumps:” O Spinola-Santerre,[*] hast thou the mixture ready? Every man his own engineer! And still the fire-deluge abates not; even women are firing, and Turks; at least one woman (with her sweetheart), and one Turk.† Gardes Françaises have come: real cannon, real cannoneers. Usher Maillard is busy, half-pay Elie, half-pay Hulin rage in the midst of thousands.

How the great Bastille Clock ticks (inaudible) in its Inner Court there, at its ease, hour after hour; as if nothing special, for it or the world, were passing! It tolled One when the firing began; and is now pointing towards Five, and still the firing slakes not.—Far down, in their vaults, the seven Prisoners[†] hear muffled din as of earthquakes, their Turnkeys answer vaguely.

Wo to thee, de Launay, with thy poor hundred Invalides! Broglie is distant, and his ears heavy: Besenval hears, but can send no help. One poor troop of Hussars has crept, reconnoitring, cautiously along the quais, as far as the Pont Neuf. “We are come to join you,” said the Captain; for the crowd seems shoreless. A large-headed dwarfish individual, of smoke-bleared aspect, shambles forward, opening his blue lips, for there is sense in him; and croaks: “Alight then, and give up your arms!” The Hussar-Captain is too happy to be escorted to the barriers, and dismissed on parole. Who the squat individual was? Men answer, It is M. Marat, author of the excellent pacific Avis au Peuple![‡] Great truly, O thou remarkable Dogleech, is this thy day of emergence and new-birth, and yet this same day come four years—!—But let the curtains of the Future hang.

What shall de Launay do? One thing only de Launay could have done: what he said he would do. Fancy him sitting, from the first, with lighted taper, within arm’s length of the powder-magazine; motionless, like old Roman Senator, or bronze Lamp-holder; coldly apprising Thuriot, and all men, by a slight motion of his eye, what his resolution was:—Harmless he sat there, while unharmed; but the King’s fortress, meanwhile, could, might, would, or should, in nowise, be surrendered, save to the King’s Messenger: one old man’s life is worthless, so it be lost with honour; but think, ye brawling canaille, how will it be Edition: current; Page: [147] when a whole Bastille springs skyward!—In such statuesque, taper-holding attitude, one fancies de Launay might have left Thuriot, the red Clerks of the Bazoche, Curé of Saint-Stephen and all the tagrag-and-bobtail of the world, to work their will.

And yet, withal, he could not do it. Hast thou considered how each man’s heart is so tremulously responsive to the hearts of all men, hast thou noted how omnipotent is the very sound of many men? How their shriek of indignation palsies the strong soul, their howl of contumely withers with unfelt pangs? The Ritter Gluck confessed that the ground-tone of the noblest passage, in one of his noblest Operas, was the voice of the populace he had heard at Vienna, crying to their Kaiser, Bread! Bread![*] Great is the combined voice of men, the utterance of their instincts, which are truer than their thoughts, it is the greatest a man encounters, among the sounds and shadows, which make up this World of Time. He who can resist that, has his footing somewhere beyond time. De Launay could not do it Distracted, he hovers between two, hopes in the middle of despair, surrenders not his fortress, declares that he will blow it up, seizes torches to blow it up, and does not blow it. Unhappy old de Launay, it is the death-agony of thy Bastille and thee! Jail, jailoring and jailor, all three, such as they may have been, must finish.

For four hours now has the World-Bedlam roared call it the World-Chimaera, blowing fire! The poor Invalides have sunk under their battlements, or rise only with reversed muskets: they have made a white flag of napkins, go beating the chamade, or seeming to beat, for one can hear nothing. The very Swiss at the Portcullis look weary of firing, disheartened in the fire-deluge, a porthole at the drawbridge is opened, as by one that would speak. See Huissier Maillard, the shifty man! On his plank, swinging over the abyss of that stone-ditch; plank resting on parapet, balanced by weight of patriots,—he hovers perilous such a dove towards such an ark! Deftly, thou shifty Usher, one man already fell, and lies smashed, far down there, against the masonry! Usher Maillard falls not deftly, unerring he walks, with outspread palm. The Swiss holds a paper through his porthole, the shifty Usher snatches it, and returns. Terms of surrender Pardon, immunity to all! Are they accepted?—“Foi d’officier, on the word of an officer,” answers half-pay Hulin,—or half-pay Elie, for men do not agree on it, “they are!” Sinks the drawbridge,—Usher Maillard bolting it when down; rushes-in the living deluge the Bastille is fallen! Victoire! La Bastille est prise!*

We quote next the passage on the Burning of Châteaux. Mr. Carlyle gives rather a different account from what English people have been used to, of that feature of the Revolution:

Starvation has been known among the French commonalty before this, known and familiar. Did we not see them, in the year 1775, presenting, in sallow faces, in wretchedness and raggedness, their Petition of Grievances, and, for answer, getting a brand-new gallows forty feet high?[†] Hunger and darkness, through long years! For look Edition: current; Page: [148] back on that earlier Paris riot, when a great personage, worn out by debauchery, was believed to be in want of blood-baths; and mothers, in worn raiment, yet with living hearts under it, “filled the public places”[*] with their wild Rachel-cries,—stilled also by the gallows. Twenty years ago, The Friend of Men (preaching to the deaf) described the Limousin peasants as wearing a pain-stricken (souffre-douleur) look, a look past complaint, “as if the oppression of the great were like the hail and the thunder, a thing irremediable, the ordinance of nature.”* And now, if in some great hour, the shock of a falling Bastille should awaken you; and it were found to be the ordinance of art merely; and remediable, reversible!

Or has the reader forgotten that “flood of savages,” which, in sight of the same Friend of Men, descended from the mountains at Mont d’Or? Lank-haired haggard faces; shapes rawboned, in high sabots; in woollen jupes, with leather girdles studded with copper-nails! They rocked from foot to foot, and beat time with their elbows too, as the quarrel and battle which was not long in beginning went on; shouting fiercely; the lank faces distorted into the similitude of a cruel laugh. For they were darkened and hardened: long had they been the prey of excise-men and tax-men, of “clerks with the cold spurt of their pen.” It was the fixed prophecy of our old Marquis, which no man would listen to, that “such Government by Blind-man’s-buff, stumbling along too far, would end by the General Overturn, the Culbute Générale!”[†]

No man would listen, each went his thoughtless way;—and Time and Destiny also travelled on. The Government by Blind-man’s-buff, stumbling along, has reached the precipice inevitable for it. Dull Drudgery, driven on, by clerks with the cold dastard spurt of their pen, has been driven—into a Communion of Drudges! For now, moreover, there have come the strangest confused tidings; by Paris Journals with their paper wings; or still more portentous, where no Journals are,† by rumour and conjecture: Oppression not inevitable, a Bastille prostrate, and the Constitution fast getting ready! Which Constitution, if it be something and not nothing, what can it be but bread to eat?

The traveller, “walking up hill bridle in hand,” overtakes “a poor woman;” the image, as such commonly are, of drudgery and scarcity, “looking sixty years of age, though she is not yet twenty-eight.” They have seven children, her poor drudge and she: a farm, with one cow, which helps to make the children soup, also one little horse, or garron. They have rents and quit-rents, Hens to pay to this Seigneur, Oat-sacks to that; King’s taxes, Statute-labour, Church-taxes, taxes enough;—and think the times inexpressible. She has heard that somewhere, in some manner, something is to be done for the poor. “God send it soon; for the dues and taxes crush us down (nous écrasent)!”‡

Fair prophecies are spoken, but they are not fulfilled. There have been Notables, Edition: current; Page: [149] Assemblages, turnings out and comings in. Intriguing and manoeuvring; parliamentary eloquence and arguing, Greek meeting Greek in high places,[*] has long gone on; yet still bread comes not. The harvest is reaped and garnered, yet still we have no bread. Urged by despair and by hope, what can Drudgery do, but rise, as predicted, and produce the General Overturn?

Fancy, then, some five full-grown millions of such gaunt figures, with their haggard faces (figures hâves); in woollen jupes, with copper-studded leather girths, and high sabots,—starting up to ask, as in forest-roarings, their washed Upper-Classes, after long unreviewed centuries, virtually this question. How have ye treated us; how have ye taught us, fed us, and led us, while we toiled for you? The answer can be read in flames, over the nightly summer-sky. This is the feeding and leading we have had of you. Emptiness,—of pocket, of stomach, of head, and of heart. Behold there is nothing in us, nothing but what nature gives her wild children of the desert. Ferocity and Appetite, Strength grounded on Hunger. Did ye mark among your Rights of Man, that man was not to die of starvation, while there was bread reaped by him? It is among the Mights of Man.

Seventy-two Châteaus have flamed aloft in the Maconnais and Beaujolais alone this seems the centre of the conflagration, but it has spread over Dauphiné, Alsace, the Lyonnais; the whole south-east is in a blaze. All over the north, from Rouen to Metz, disorder is abroad, smugglers of salt go openly in armed bands the barriers of towns are burnt; toll-gatherers, tax-gatherers, official persons put to flight. “It was thought,” says Young, “the people, from hunger, would revolt,”[†] and we see they have done it Desperate Lackalls, long prowling aimless, now finding hope in desperation itself, everywhere form a nucleus. They ring the Church bell by way of tocsin, and the Parish turns out to the work.* Ferocity, atrocity, hunger and revenge: such work as we can imagine!

Ill stands it now with the Seigneur, who, for example, “has walled up the only Fountain of the Township;” who has ridden high on his chartier and parchment; who has preserved Game not wisely but too well.[‡] Churches also, and Canonries, are sacked, without mercy; which have shorn the flock too close, forgetting to feed it. Wo to the land over which Sansculottism, in its day of vengeance, tramps roughshod,—shod in sabots! Highbred Seigneurs, with their delicate women and littles ones, had to “fly half-naked,” under cloud of night; glad to escape the flames, and even worse. You meet them at the tables-d’hôte of inns; making wise reflections or foolish that “rank is destroyed,” uncertain whither they shall now wend.† The metayer will find it convenient to be slack in paying rent. As for the Tax-gatherer, he, long hunting as a biped of prey, may now get hunted as one, his Majesty’s Exchequer will not “fill up the Deficit,”[§] this season: it is the notion of many that a Patriot Majesty, being the Restorer of French Liberty, has abolished most taxes, though, for their private ends, some men make a secret of it.

Where this will end? In the Abyss, one may prophesy; whither all Delusions, are, at all moments, travelling; where this Delusion has now arrived. For if there be a Faith, from of old, it is this, as we often repeat, that no Lie can live for ever. The very Truth has to change its vesture, from time to time; and be born again. But all Lies have sentence of death written down against them, in Heaven’s Chancery itself, and, slowly or fast, advance incessantly Edition: current; Page: [150] towards their hour. “The sign of a Grand Seigneur being landlord,” says the vehement plain-spoken Arthur Young, “are wastes, landes, deserts, ling, go to his residence, you will find it in the middle of a forest, peopled with deer, wild boars and wolves. The fields are scenes of pitiable management, as the houses are of misery. To see so many millions of hands, that would be industrious, all idle and starving, oh, if I were legislator of France, for one day, I would make these great lords skip again!”* O Arthur, thou now actually beholdest them skip;—wilt thou grow to grumble at that too?

For long years and generations it lasted, but the time came. Featherbrain, whom no reasoning and no pleading could touch, the glare of the firebrand had to illuminate, there remained but that method. Consider it, look at it! The widow is gathering nettles for her children’s dinner; a perfumed Seigneur, delicately lounging in the Oeil-de-Boeuf, has an alchemy whereby he will extract from her the third nettle, and name it Rent and Law such an arrangement must end. Ought it? But, O most fearful is such an ending! Let those, to whom God, in His great mercy, has granted time and space, prepare another and milder one.[*]

We shall now give a still more striking scene; the opening of the “Insurrection of Women.”[†]

If Voltaire once, in splenetic humour, asked his countrymen. “But you, Gualches, what have you invented?”[‡] they can now answer: the Art of Insurrection. It was an art needed in these last singular times, an art, for which the French nature, so full of vehemence, so free from depth, was perhaps of all others the fittest.

Accordingly, to what a height, one may well say of perfection, has this branch of human industry been carried by France, within the last half century! Insurrection, which, Lafayette thought, might be “the most sacred of duties,”[§] ranks now, for the French people, among the duties which they can perform. Other mobs are dull masses, which roll onwards with a dull fierce tenacity, a dull fierce heat, but emit no light-flashes of genius as they go. The French mob, again, is among the liveliest phenomena of our world. So rapid, audacious; so clear-sighted, inventive, prompt to seize the moment; instinct with life to its finger-ends! That talent, were there no other, of spontaneously standing in queue, distinguishes, as we said, the French People from all Peoples, ancient and modern.

Let the reader confess too that, taking one thing with another, perhaps few terrestrial Appearances are better worth considering than mobs. Your mob is a genuine outburst of Nature, issuing from, or communicating with, the deepest deep of Nature. When so much goes grinning and grimacing as a lifeless Formality, and under the stiff buckram no heart can be felt beating, here once more, if nowhere else, is a Sincerity and Reality. Shudder at it, or even shriek over it, if thou must; nevertheless consider it. Such a Complex of human Forces and Individualities hurled forth, in their transcendental mood, to act and react, on circumstances and on one another; to work out what it is in them to work. The thing they will do is known to no man; least of all to themselves. It is the inflammablest immeasurable Edition: current; Page: [151] Fire-work, generating, consuming itself. With what phases, to what extent, with what results it will burn off, Philosophy and Perspicacity conjecture in vain.

“Man,” as has been written, “is for ever interesting to man; nay, properly there is nothing else interesting.”[*] In which light also, may we not discern why most Battles have become so wearisome? Battles, in these ages, are transacted by mechanism, with the slightest possible development of human individuality or spontaneity, men now even die, and kill one another, in an artificial manner. Battles ever since Homer’s time, when they were Fighting Mobs, have mostly ceased to be worth looking at, worth reading of, or remembering. How many wearisome bloody Battles does History strive to represent; or even, in a husky way, to sing,—and she would omit or carelessly slur-over this one Insurrection of Women?

A thought, or dim raw-material of a thought, was fermenting all night, universally in the female head, and might explode. In squalid garret, on Monday morning, Maternity awakes, to hear children weeping for bread. Maternity must forth to the streets, to the herb-markets and Bakers’-queues, meets there with hunger-stricken Maternity, sympathetic, exasperative. O we unhappy women! But, instead of Bakers’-queues, why not to Aristocrats’ palaces, the root of the matter? Allons! Let us assemble. To the Hôtel-de-Ville; to Versailles; to the Lanterne!

In one of the Guardhouses of the Quartier Saint-Eustache, “a young woman” seizes a drum,—for how shall National Guards give fire on women, on a young woman? The young woman seizes the drum; sets forth, beating it, “uttering cries relative to the dearth of grains.” Descend, O mothers, descend, ye Judiths, to food and revenge!—All women gather and go, crowds storm all stairs, force out all women the female Insurrectionary Force, according to Camille, resembles the English Naval one; there is a universal “Press of women.”[†] Robust Dames of the Halle, slim mantua-makers, assiduous, risen with the dawn, ancient Virginity tripping to matins, the Housemaid, with early broom; all must go. Rouse ye, O women, the laggard men will not act; they say, we ourselves may act!

And so, like snowbreak from the mountains, for every staircase is a melted brook, it storms, tumultuous, wild-shrilling, towards the Hôtel-de-Ville. Tumultuous, with or without drum-music, for the Faubourg Saint-Antoine also has tucked up its gown, and, with besom-staves, fire-irons, and even rusty pistols (void of ammunition), is flowing on. Sound of it flies, with a velocity of sound, to the utmost Barriers. By seven o’clock, on this raw October morning, fifth of the month, the Townhall will see wonders. Nay, as chance would have it, a male party are already there; clustering tumultuously round some National Patrol, and a Baker who has been seized with short weights. They are there; and have even lowered the rope of the Lanterne. So that the official persons have to smuggle forth the short-weighing Baker by back doors, and even send “to all the Districts” for more force.

Grand it was, says Camille, to see so many Judiths, from eight to ten thousand of them in all, rushing out to search into the root of the matter! Not unfrightful it must have been, ludicro-terrific, and most unmanageable. At such hour the overwatched Three Hundred are not yet stirring, none but some Clerks, a company of National Guards, and M. de Gouvion, the Major-General. Gouvion has fought in America for the cause of civil Liberty, a man of no inconsiderable heart, but deficient in head. He is, for the moment, in his back apartment, Edition: current; Page: [152] assuaging Usher Maillard, the Bastille-serjeant, who has come, as too many do, with “representations.” The assuagement is still incomplete when our Judiths arrive.

The National Guards form on the outer stairs, with levelled bayonets, the ten thousand Judiths press up, resistless, with obtestations, with outspread hands,—merely to speak to the Mayor. The rear forces them; nay, from male hands in the rear, stones already fly: the National Guard must do one of two things; sweep the Place de Grève with cannon, or else open to right and left. They open; the living deluge rushes in. Through all rooms and cabinets, upwards to the topmost belfry; ravenous; seeking arms, seeking Mayors, seeking justice;—while, again, the better-dressed speak kindly to the Clerks; point out the misery of these poor women; also their ailments, some even of an interesting sort.*

Poor M. de Gouvion is shiftless in this extremity;—a man shiftless, perturbed, who will one day commit suicide. How happy for him that Usher Maillard, the shifty, was there, at the moment, though making representations! Fly back, thou shifty Maillard, seek the Bastille Company; and O return fast with it; above all, with thy own shifty head! For, behold, the Judiths can find no Mayor or Municipal; scarcely, in the topmost belfry, can they find poor Abbé Lefevre the Powder-distributor. Him, for want of a better, they suspend there; in the pale morning light; over the top of all Paris, which swims in one’s failing eyes:—a horrible end? Nay, the rope broke, as French ropes often did, or else an Amazon cut it. Abbé Lefevre falls, some twenty feet, rattling among the leads; and lives long years after, though always with “a tremblement in the limbs.”†

And now doors fly under hatchets: the Judiths have broken the Armoury; have seized guns and cannons, three money-bags, paper-heaps; torches flare: in few minutes, our brave Hôtel-de-Ville which dates from the Fourth Henry, will, with all that it holds, be in flames![*]

Here opens a new chapter.

In flames, truly,—were it not that Usher Maillard, swift of foot, shifty of head, has returned!

Maillard, of his own motion, for Gouvion or the rest would not even sanction him,—snatches a drum; descends the Porch-stairs, ran-tan, beating sharp, with loud rolls, his Rogues’-march: to Versailles! Allons, à Versailles! As men beat on kettle or warming-pan, when angry she-bees, or say, flying desperate wasps, are to be hived; and the desperate insects hear it, and cluster round it,—simply as round a guidance, where there was none, so now these Menads round shifty Maillard, Riding-Usher of the Châtelet. The axe pauses uplifted; Abbé Lefevre is left half-hanged; from the belfry downwards all vomits itself. What rub-a-dub is that? Stanislas Maillard, Bastille-hero, will lead us to Versailles? Joy to thee, Maillard; blessed art thou above Riding-Ushers! Away then, away!

The seized cannon are yoked with seized cart-horses, brownlocked Demoiselle Théroigne, with pike and helmet, sits there as gunneress, “with haughty eye and serene fair countenance;” comparable, some think, to the Maid of Orleans, or even recalling “the idea of Pallas Athene.”‡ Maillard (for his drum still rolls) is, by heaven-rending acclamation, admitted General. Maillard hastens the languid march. Maillard, beating rhythmic, with sharp ran-tan, all along the Quais, leads forward, with difficulty, his Menadic host. Such a host—marched not in silence! The bargeman pauses on the river; all wagoners and Edition: current; Page: [153] coach-drivers fly; men peer from windows,—not women, lest they be pressed. Sight of sights: Bacchantes, in these ultimate Formalised Ages! Bronze Henri looks on, from his Pont-Neuf; the Monarchic Louvre, Medicean Tuileries see a day not theretofore seen.

And now Maillard has his Menads in the Champs Elysées (fields Tartarean rather); and the Hôtel-de-Ville has suffered comparatively nothing. Broken doors, an Abbé Lefevre, who shall never more distribute powder; three sacks of money, most part of which (for Sansculottism, though famishing, is not without honour) shall be returned:* this is all the damage Great Maillard! A small nucleus of order is round his drum, but his outskirts fluctuate like the mad ocean: for rascality male and female is flowing in on him, from the four winds; guidance there is none but in his single head and two drumsticks.

O Maillard, when, since war first was, had General of Force such a task before him, as thou this day? Walter the Penniless still touches the feeling heart but then Walter had sanction: had space to turn in, and also his Crusaders were of the male sex. Thou, this day, disowned of Heaven and Earth, art General of Menads. Their inarticulate frenzy thou must, on the spur of the instant, render into articulate words, into actions that are not frantic. Fail in it, this way or that! Pragmatical Officiality, with its penalties and law-books, waits before thee, Menads storm behind. If such hewed off the melodious head of Orpheus, and hurled it into the Peneus waters, what may they not make of thee:—thee rhythmic merely, with no music but a sheepskin drum!—Maillard did not fail. Remarkable Maillard, if fame were not an accident, and history a distillation of rumour, how remarkable wert thou!

Scarcely was Maillard gone, when M. de Gouvion’s message to all the Districts, and such tocsin and drumming of the générale, began to take effect. Armed National Guards from every District; especially the Grenadiers of the Centre, who are our old Gardes Françaises, arrive, in quick sequence, on the Place de Grève. An “immense people” is there; Saint-Antoine, with pike and rusty firelock, is all crowding thither, be it welcome or unwelcome. The Centre Grenadiers are received with cheering: “it is not cheers that we want,” answer they gloomily; “the nation has been insulted; to arms, and come with us for orders!” Ha, sits the wind so? Patriotism and Patrollotism are now one!

The Three Hundred have assembled: “all the Committees are in activity,” Lafayette is dictating despatches for Versailles, when a Deputation of the Centre Grenadiers introduces itself to him. The Deputation makes military obeisance, and thus speaks, not without a kind of thought in it. “Mon Général, we are deputed by the Six Companies of Grenadiers. We do not think you a traitor, but we think the Government betrays you, it is time that this end. We cannot turn our bayonets against women crying to us for bread. The people are miserable, the source of the mischief is at Versailles we must go seek the King, and bring him to Paris. We must exterminate (exterminer) the Regiment de Flandre and the Gardes-du-Corps, who have dared to trample on the National Cockade. If the King be too weak to wear his crown, let him lay it down. You will crown his Son, you will name a Council of Regency, and all will go better.”† Reproachful astonishment paints itself on the face of Lafayette, speaks itself from his eloquent chivalrous lips: in vain. “My General, we would shed the last drop of our blood for you; but the root of the mischief is at Versailles, we must go and bring the King to Paris; all the people wish it, tout le peuple le veut.”[*]

My General descends to the outer staircase, and harangues; once more in vain. “To Versailles! To Versailles!” Mayor Bailly, sent for through floods of Sansculottism, attempts academic oratory from his gilt state-coach; realises nothing but infinite hoarse cries Edition: current; Page: [154] of: “Bread! To Versailles!”[*]—and gladly shrinks within doors. Lafayette mounts the white charger; and again harangues, and reharangues: with eloquence, with firmness, indignant demonstration; with all things but persuasion. “To Versailles! To Versailles!” So lasts it, hour after hour;—for the space of half a day.

The great Scipio Americanus can do nothing; not so much as escape. “Morbleu, mon Général,” cry the Grenadiers serrying their ranks as the white charger makes a motion that way, “You will not leave us, you will abide with us!”[†] A perilous juncture: Mayor Bailly and the Municipals sit quaking within doors, My General is prisoner without: the Place de Grève, with its thirty thousand Regulars, its whole irregular Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau, is one minatory mass of clear or rusty steel, all hearts set, with a moody fixedness, on one object. Moody, fixed are all hearts, tranquil is no heart,—if it be not that of the white charger, who paws there, with arched neck, composedly champing his bit; as if no World, with its Dynasties and Eras, were now rushing down. The drizzly day tends westward, the cry is still. “To Versailles!”

Nay now, borne from afar, come quite sinister cries, hoarse, reverberating in longdrawn hollow murmurs, with syllables too like those of Lanterne! Or else, irregular Sansculottism may be marching off, of itself; with pikes, nay with cannon. The inflexible Scipio does at length, by aide-de-camp, ask of the Municipals. Whether or not he may go? A Letter is handed out to him, over armed heads; sixty thousand faces flash fixedly on his, there is stillness and no bosom breathes, till he have read. By Heaven, he grows suddenly pale! Do the Municipals permit? “Permit and even order,”[‡]—since he can no other. Clangour of approval rends the welkin. To your ranks, then; let us march!

It is, as we compute, towards three in the afternoon. Indignant National Guards may dine for once from their haversack, dined or undined, they march with one heart. Paris flings up her windows, claps hands, as the Avengers, with their shrilling drums and shalms tramp by, she will then sit pensive, apprehensive, and pass rather a sleepless night.* On the white charger, Lafayette, in the slowest possible manner, going and coming, and eloquently haranguing among the ranks, rolls onward with his thirty thousand. Saint-Antoine, with pike and cannon, has preceded him, a mixed multitude, of all and of no arms, hovers on his flanks and skirts; the country once more pauses agape. Paris marche sur nous.[§]

We cannot stop here. See the beginning of the next chapter.

For indeed, about this same moment, Maillard has halted his draggled Menads on the last hill-top; and now Versailles, and the Château of Versailles, and far and wide the inheritance of Royalty opens to the wondering eye. From far on the right, over Marly and Saint-Germain-en-Lay; round towards Rambouillet, on the left beautiful all; softly embosomed; as if in sadness, in the dim moist weather! and near before us is Versailles, New and Old; with that broad frondent Avenue de Versailles between,—stately-frondent, broad, 300 feet as men reckon, with four rows of elms; and then the Château de Versailles, ending in royal Parks and Pleasances, gleaming lakelets, arbours, Labyrinths, the Ménagerie, and Great and Little Trianon. High-towered dwellings, leafy pleasant places, where the gods of this lower world abide: whence, nevertheless, black Care cannot be excluded; whither Menadic Hunger is even now advancing, armed with pike-thyrsi!

Edition: current; Page: [155]

Yes, yonder, Mesdames, where our straight frondent Avenue, joined, as you note, by Two frondent brother Avenues from this hand and from that, spreads out into Place Royale and Palace Forecourt, yonder is the Salle des Menus. Yonder an august Assembly sits regenerating France. Forecourt, Grand Court, Court of Marble, Court narrowing into Court you may discern next, or fancy, on the extreme verge of which that glass-dome, visibly glittering like a star of hope, is the—Oeil-de-Boeuf! Yonder, or nowhere in the world, is bread baked for us. But, O Mesdames, were not one thing good: That our cannons, with Demoiselle Théroigne and all show of war, be put to the rear? Submission beseems petitioners of a National Assembly; we are strangers in Versailles,—whence, too audibly, there comes even now sound as of tocsin and générale! Also to put on, if possible, a cheerful countenance, hiding our sorrows; and even to sing? Sorrow, pitied of the Heavens, is hateful, suspicious to the Earth.—So counsels shifty Maillard, haranguing his Menads, on the heights near Versailles.

Cunning Maillard’s dispositions are obeyed. The draggled Insurrectionists advance up the Avenue, “in three columns” among the four Elm-rows; “singing Henri Quatre,” with what melody they can; and shouting Vive le Roi.[*] Versailles, though the Elm-rows are dripping wet, crowds from both sides, with. “Vivent nos Parisiennes, Our Paris ones for ever!”[†]

We skip 20 pages, and pass to a later part of the same incident.

Deep sleep has fallen promiscuously on the high and on the low, suspending most things, even wrath and famine. Darkness covers the Earth.[‡] But, far on the north-east. Paris flings up her great yellow gleam, far into the wet black Night. For all is illuminated there, as in the old July Nights; the streets deserted, for alarm of war, the Municipals all wakeful, patrols hailing, with their hoarse Who-goes. There, as we discover, our poor slim Louison Chabray, her poor nerves all fluttered, is arriving about this very hour. There Usher Maillard will arrive, about an hour hence, “towards four in the morning.” They report, successively, to a wakeful Hôtel-de-Ville what comfort they can report, which again, with early dawn, large comfortable placards, shall impart to all men.[§]

Lafayette, in the Hôtel de Noailles, not far from the Château, having now finished haranguing, sits with his officers consulting: at five o’clock the unanimous best counsel is, that a man so tost and toiled for twenty-four hours and more, fling himself on a bed, and seek some rest. . .

The dull dawn of a new morning, drizzly and chill, had but broken over Versailles, when it pleased Destiny that a Bodyguard should look out of window, on the right wing of the Château, to see what prospect there was in Heaven and in Earth. Rascality male and female is prowling in view of him. His fasting stomach is, with good cause, sour, he perhaps cannot forbear a passing malison on them, least of all can he forbear answering such.

Ill words breed worse till the worst word came, and then the ill deed. Did the maledicent Bodyguard, getting (as was too inevitable) better malediction than he gave, load his musketoon, and threaten to fire, nay, actually fire? Were wise who wist! It stands asserted, to us not credibly. Be this as it may, menaced Rascality, in whinnying scorn, is shaking at all Grates: the fastening of one (some write, it was a chain merely) gives way. Rascality is in the Grand Court, whinnying louder still.

The maledicent Bodyguard, more Bodyguards than he do now give fire, a man’s arm is Edition: current; Page: [156] shattered. Lecointre will depose that “the Sieur Cardaine, a National Guard without arms, was stabbed.” But see, sure enough, poor Jerôme l’Heritier, an unarmed National Guard he too, “cabinet maker, a saddler’s son, of Paris,”* with the down of youthhood still on his chin,—he reels death-stricken; rushes to the pavement, scattering it with his blood and brains!—Allelew! Wilder than Irish wakes, rises the howl: of pity; of infinite revenge. In few moments, the Grate of the inner and inmost Court, which they name Court of Marble, this too is forced, or surprised, and bursts open: the Court of Marble too is overflowed, up the Grand Staircase, up all stairs and entrances rushes the living Deluge! Deshuttes and Varigny, the two sentry Bodyguards, are trodden down, are massacred with a hundred pikes. Women snatch their cutlasses, or any weapon, and storm-in Menadic:—other women lift the corpse of shot Jerôme; lay it down on the marble steps; there shall the livid face and smashed head, dumb for ever, speak.

Wo now to all Bodyguards, mercy is none for them! Miomandre de Sainte-Marie pleads with soft words, on the Grand Staircase, “descending four steps.”—to the roaring tornado.[*] His comrades snatch him up, by the skirts and belts; literally, from the jaws of Destruction; and slam-to their Door. This also will stand few instants; the panels shivering in, like potsherds. Barricading serves not: fly fast, ye Bodyguards; rabid Insurrection, like the hellhound Chase, uproaring at your heels!

The terrorstruck Bodyguards fly, bolting and barricading; it follows. Whitherward? Through hall on hall: wo, now! towards the Queen’s Suite of Rooms, in the furthest room of which the Queen is now asleep. Five sentinels rush through that long Suite; they are in the Anteroom knocking loud: “Save the Queen!” Trembling women fall at their feet with tears, are answered: “yes, we will die; save ye the Queen!”

Tremble not, women, but haste: for, lo, another voice shouts far through the outermost door, “save the Queen!” and the door is shut. It is brave Miomandre’s voice that shouts this second warning. He has stormed across imminent death to do it; fronts imminent death, having done it. Brave Tardivet du Repaire, bent on the same desperate service, was borne down with pikes; his comrades hardly snatched him in again alive.[†] Miomandre and Tardivet: let the names of those two Bodyguards, as the names of brave men should, live long.

Trembling Maids of Honour, one of whom from afar caught glimpse of Miomandre as well as heard him, hastily wrap the Queen; not in robes of state. She flies for her life, across the Oeil-de-Boeuf; against the main door of which too Insurrection batters. She is in the King’s Apartment, in the King’s arms; she clasps her children amid a faithful few. The Imperial-hearted bursts into mother’s tears: “O my friends, save me and my children, O mes amis, sauvez-moi et mes enfans!”[‡] The battering of Insurrectionary axes clangs audible across the Oeil-de-Boeuf. What an hour!

Yes, friends: a hideous fearful hour; shameful alike to Governed and Governor; wherein Governed and Governor ignominiously testify that their relation is at an end. Rage, which had brewed itself in twenty thousand hearts, for the last four-and-twenty hours, has taken fire: Jerôme’s brained corpse lies there as live-coal. It is, as we said, the infinite Element bursting in, wild-surging through all corridors and conduits.

Meanwhile, the poor Bodyguards have got hunted mostly into the Oeil-de-Boeuf. They may die there, at the King’s threshold; they can do little to defend it. They are heaping Edition: current; Page: [157]tabourets (stools of honour), benches and all moveables, against the door; at which the axe of Insurrection thunders. But did brave Miomandre perish, then, at the Queen’s outer door? No, he was fractured, slashed, lacerated, left for dead, he has nevertheless crawled hither; and shall live, honoured of loyal France. Remark also, in flat contradiction to much which has been said and sung, that Insurrection did not burst that door he had defended, but hurried elsewhither, seeking new Bodyguards.*

Poor Bodyguards, with their Thyestes’ Opera-Repast! Well for them, that Insurrection has only pikes and axes; no right sieging-tools! It shakes and thunders. Must they all perish miserably, and Royalty with them? Deshuttes and Varigny, massacred at the first inbreak, have been beheaded in the marble court, a sacrifice to Jerôme’s manes. Jourdan with the tile-beard did that duty willingly; and asked, If there were no more? Another captive they are leading round the corpse, with howl-chauntings: may not Jourdan again tuck up his sleeves?

And louder and louder rages Insurrection within, plundering if it cannot kill; louder and louder it thunders at the Oeil-de-Boeuf, what can now hinder its bursting in?—On a sudden it ceases; the battering has ceased! Wild rushing: the cries grow fainter; there is silence, or the tramp of regular steps; then a friendly knocking. “We are the Centre Grenadiers, old Gardes Françaises; open to us, Messieurs of the Garde-du-Corps; we have not forgotten how you saved us at Fontenoy!”† The door is opened; enter Captain Gondran and the Centre Grenadiers, there are military embracings; there is sudden deliverance from death into life.

Strange Sons of Adam! It was to “exterminate” these Gardes-du-Corps that the Centre Grenadiers left home, and now they have rushed to save them from extermination. The memory of common peril, of old help, melts the rough heart; bosom is clasped to bosom, not in war. The King shews himself, one moment, through the door of his apartment, with “Do not hurt my Guards!”—“Soyons frères, let us be brothers!” cries Captain Gondran;[*] and again dashes off, with levelled bayonets, to sweep the Palace clear.

Now too Lafayette, suddenly roused, not from sleep (for his eyes had not yet closed), arrives; with passionate popular eloquence, with prompt military word of command. National Guards, suddenly roused, by sound of trumpet and alarm-drum, are all arriving. The death-knell ceases: the first sky-lambent blaze of Insurrection is got damped down: it burns now, if unextinguished, yet flameless, as charred coals do, and not inextinguishable.[†]

And what (it may be asked) are Mr. Carlyle’s opinions?

If this means, whether is he Tory, Whig, or Democrat; is he for things as they are, or for things nearly as they are;[‡] or is he one who thinks that subverting things as they are, and setting up Democracy is the main thing needful? we answer, he is none of all these. We should say that he has appropriated and made part of his own frame of thought, nearly all that is good in all these several modes of thinking. Edition: current; Page: [158] But it may be asked, what opinion has Mr. Carlyle formed of the French Revolution, as an event in universal history; and this question is entitled to an answer. It should be, however, premised, that in a history upon the plan of Mr. Carlyle’s, the opinions of the writer are a matter of secondary importance. In reading an ordinary historian, we want to know his opinions, because it is mainly his opinions of things, and not the things themselves, that he sets before us; or if any features of the things themselves, those chiefly, which his opinions lead him to consider as of importance. Our readers have seen sufficient in the extracts we have made for them, to be satisfied that this is not Mr. Carlyle’s method. Mr. Carlyle brings the thing before us in the concrete—clothed, not indeed in all its properties and circumstances, since these are infinite, but in as many of them as can be authentically ascertained and imaginatively realized: not prejudging that some of those properties and circumstances will prove instructive and others not, a prejudgment which is the fertile source of misrepresentation and one-sided historical delineation without end. Every one knows, who has attended (for instance) to the sifting of a complicated case by a court of justice, that as long as our image of the fact remains in the slightest degree vague and hazy and undefined, we cannot tell but that what we do not yet distinctly see may be precisely that on which all turns. Mr. Carlyle, therefore, brings us acquainted with persons, things, and events, before he suggests to us what to think of them: nay, we see that this is the very process by which he arrives at his own thoughts; he paints the thing to himself—he constructs a picture of it in his own mind, and does not, till afterwards, make any logical propositions about it at all. This done, his logical propositions concerning the thing may be true, or may be false; the thing is there, and any reader may find a totally different set of propositions in it if he can; as he might in the reality, if that had been before him.

We, for our part, do not always agree in Mr. Carlyle’s opinions either on things or on men. But we hold it to be impossible that any person should set before himself a perfectly true picture of a great historical event, as it actually happened, and yet that his judgment of it should be radically wrong. Differing partially from some of Mr. Carlyle’s detached views, we hold his theory, or theorem, of the Revolution, to be the true theory; true as far as it goes, and wanting little of being as complete as any theory of so vast and complicated a phenomena can be. Nay, we do not think that any rational creature, now that the thing can be looked at calmly, now that we have nothing to hope or to fear from it, can form any second theory on the matter.

Mr. Carlyle’s view of the Revolution is briefly this: That it was the breaking down of a great Imposture: which had not always been an Imposture, but had been becoming such for several centuries.

Two bodies—the King and Feudal Nobility, and the Clergy—held their exalted stations, and received the obedience and allegiance which were paid to them, by virtue solely of their affording guidance to the people: the one, directing and Edition: current; Page: [159] keeping order among them in their conjunct operations towards the pursuit of their most important temporal interests; the other, ministering to their spiritual teaching and culture. These are the grounds on which alone any government either claims obedience or finds it: for the obedience of twenty-five millions to a few hundred thousand never yet was yielded to avowed tyranny.

Now, this guidance, the original ground of all obedience, the privileged classes did for centuries give. The King and the Nobles led the people in war, and protected and judged them in peace, being the fittest persons to do so who then existed; and the Clergy did teach the best doctrine, did inculcate and impress upon the people the best rule of life then known, and did believe in the doctrine and in the rule of life which they taught, and manifested their belief by their actions, and believed that, in teaching it, they were doing the highest thing appointed to mortals. So far as they did this, both spiritual and temporal rulers deserved and obtained reverence, and willing loyal obedience. But for centuries before the French Revolution, the sincerity which once was in this scheme of society was gradually dying out. The King and the Nobles afforded less and less of any real guidance, of any real protection to the people; and even ceased more and more to fancy that they afforded any. All the important business of society went on without them, nay, mostly in spite of their hindrance. The appointed spiritual teachers ceased to do their duty as teachers, ceased to practise what they taught, ceased to believe it, but alas, not to cant about it, or to receive wages as teachers of it. Thus the whole scheme of society and government in France became one great Lie: the places of honour and power being all occupied by persons whose sole claim to occupy them was the pretence of being what they were not, of doing what they did not, nor even for a single moment attempted to do. All other vileness and profligacy in the rulers of a country were but the inevitable consequences of this inherent vice in the condition of their existence. And, this continuing for centuries, the government growing ever more and more consciously a Lie, the people ever more and more perceiving it to be such, the day of reckoning, which comes for all impostures, came for this: the Good would no longer obey such rulers, the Bad ceased to be in awe of them, and both together rose up and hurled them into chaos.

Such is Mr. Carlyle’s idea of what the Revolution was. And now, as to the melancholy turn it took, the horrors which accompanied it, the iron despotism by which it was forced to wind itself up, and the smallness of its positive results, compared with those which were hoped for by the sanguine in its commencement.

Mr. Carlyle’s theory of these things is also a simple one: That the men, most of them good, and many of them among the most instructed of their generation, who attempted at that period to regenerate France, failed in what it was impossible that any one should succeed in: namely, in attempting to found a government, to create a new order of society, a new set of institutions and habits, among a people having no convictions to base such order of things upon. That the existing government, habits, state of society, were bad, this the people were thoroughly convinced of, Edition: current; Page: [160] and rose up as one man, to declare, in every language of deed and word, that they would no more endure it. What was, was bad; but what was good, nobody had determined; no opinion on that subject had rooted itself in the people’s minds; nor was there even any person, or any body of persons, deference for whom was rooted in their minds and whose word they were willing to take for all the rest. Suppose, then, that the twelve hundred members of the Constituent Assembly had even been gifted with perfect knowledge what arrangement of society was best:—how were they to get time to establish it? Or how were they to hold the people in obedience to it when established? A people with no preconceived reverence, either for it or for them; a people like slaves broke from their fetters—with all man’s boundless desires let loose in indefinite expectation, and all the influences of habit and imagination which keep mankind patient under the denial of what they crave for, annihilated for the time, never to be restored but in some quite different shape?

Faith, doubtless, in representative institutions, there was, and of the firmest kind; but unhappily this was not enough; for all that representative institutions themselves can do, is to give practical effect to the faith of the people in something else. What is a representative constitution? Simply a set of contrivances for ascertaining the convictions of the people; for enabling them to declare what men they have faith in; or, failing such, what things the majority of them will insist upon having done to them—by what rule they are willing to be governed. But what if the majority have not faith in any men, nor know even in the smallest degree what things they wish to have done, in what manner they would be governed? This was the condition of the French people. To have made it otherwise was possible, but required time; and time, unhappily, in a Revolution, is not given. A great man, indeed, may do it, by inspiring at least faith in himself, which may last till the tree he has planted has taken root, and can stand alone; such apparently was Solon,* and such perhaps, had he lived, might have been Mirabeau: nay, in the absence of other greatness, even a great quack may temporarily do it; as Napoleon, himself a mixture of great man and great quack, did in some measure exemplify. Revolutions sweep much away, but if any Revolution since the beginning of the world ever founded anything, towards which the minds of the people had not been growing for generations previous, it has been founded by some individual man.

Much more must be added to what has now been said, to make the statement of Mr. Carlyle’s opinions on the French Revolution anything like complete; nor shall Edition: current; Page: [161] we any further set forth, either such of those opinions as we agree in, or those, far less numerous, from which we disagree. Nevertheless, we will not leave the subject without pointing out what appears to us to be the most prominent defect in our author’s general mode of thinking. His own method being that of the artist, not of the man of science—working as he does by figuring things to himself as wholes, not dissecting them into their parts—he appears, though perhaps it is but appearance, to entertain something like a contempt for the opposite method; and to go as much too far in his distrust of analysis and generalization, as others (the Constitutional party, for instance, in the French Revolution) went too far in their reliance upon it.

Doubtless, in the infinite complexities of human affairs, any general theorem which a wise man will form concerning them, must be regarded as a mere approximation to truth; an approximation obtained by striking an average of many cases, and consequently not exactly fitting any one case. No wise man, therefore, will stand upon his theorem only—neglecting to look into the specialties of the case in hand, and see what features that may present which may take it out of any theorem, or bring it within the compass of more theorems than one. But the far greater number of people—when they have got a formula by rote, when they can bring the matter in hand within some maxim “in that case made and provided” by the traditions of the vulgar, by the doctrines of their sect or school, or by some generalization of their own—do not think it necessary to let their mind’s eye rest upon the thing itself at all; but deliberate and act, not upon knowledge of the thing, but upon a hearsay of it; being (to use a frequent illustration of our author) provided with spectacles, they fancy it not needful to use their eyes.[*] It should be understood that general principles are not intended to dispense with thinking and examining, but to help us to think and examine. When the object itself is out of our reach, and we cannot examine into it, we must follow general principles, because, by doing so, we are not so likely to go wrong, and almost certain not to go so far wrong, as if we floated on the boundless ocean of mere conjecture; but when we are not driven to guess, when we have means and appliances[†] for observing, general principles are nothing more or other than helps towards a better use of those means and appliances.

Thus far we and Mr. Carlyle travel harmoniously together; but here we apparently diverge. For, having admitted that general principles (or formulae, as our author calls them, after old Mirabeau, the crabbed ami des hommes)[‡] are helps to observation, not substitutes for it, we must add, that they are necessaryEdition: current; Page: [162] helps, and that without general principles no one ever observed a particular case to any purpose. For, except by general principles, how do we bring the light of past experience to bear upon the new case? The essence of past experience lies embodied in those logical, abstract propositions, which our author makes so light of:—there, and no where else. From them we learn what has ordinarily been found true, or even recal what we ourselves have found true, in innumerable unnamed and unremembered cases, more or less resembling the present. We are hence taught, at the least, what we shall probably find true in the present case; and although this, which is only a probability, may be lazily acquiesced in and acted upon without further inquiry as a certainty, the risk even so is infinitely less than if we began without a theory, or even a probable hypothesis. Granting that all the facts of the particular instance are within the reach of observation, how difficult is the work of observing, how almost impossible that of disentangling a complicated case, if, when we begin, no one view of it appears to us more probable than another. Without a hypothesis to commence with, we do not even know what end to begin at, what points to enquire into. Nearly every thing that has ever been ascertained by scientific observers, was brought to light in the attempt to test and verify some theory. To start from a theory, but not to see the object through the theory; to bring light with us, but also to receive other light from whencesoever it comes; such is the part of the philosopher, of the true practical seer or person of insight.

Connected with the tendency which we fancy we perceive in our author, to undervalue general principles, is another tendency which we think is perceptible in him, to set too low a value on what constitutions and forms of government can do. Be it admitted once for all, that no form of government will enable you, as our author has elsewhere said, “given a world of rogues, to produce an honesty by their united action;”[*] nor when a people are wholly without faith either in man or creed, has any representative constitution a charm to render them governable well, or even governable at all. On the other hand, Mr. Carlyle must no less admit, that when a nation has faith in any men, or any set of principles, representative institutions furnish the only regular and peaceable mode in which that faith can quietly declare itself, and those men, or those principles, obtain the predominance. It is surely no trifling matter to have a legalized means whereby the guidance will always be in the hands of the Acknowledged Wisest, who, if not always the really wisest, are at least those whose wisdom, such as it may be, is the most available for the purpose. Doubtless it is the natural law of representative governments that the power is shared, in varying proportions, between the really skilfullest and the skilfullest quacks; with a tendency, in easy times, towards the preponderance of Edition: current; Page: [163] the quacks, in the “times which try men’s souls,”[*] towards that of the true men. Improvements enough may be expected as mankind improve, but that the best and wisest shall always be accounted such, that we need not expect; because the quack can always steal, and vend for his own profit, as much of the good ware as is marketable. But is not all this to the full as likely to happen in every other kind of government as in a representative one? with these differences in favour of representative government, which will be found perhaps to be its only real and universal pre-eminence: That it alone is government by consent—government by mutual compromise and compact; while all others are, in one form or another, governments by constraint: That it alone proceeds by quiet muster of opposing strengths, when that which is really weakest sees itself to be such, and peaceably gives way; a benefit never yet realized but in countries inured to a representative government; elsewhere nothing but actual blows can show who is strongest, and every great dissension of opinion must break out into a civil war.

We have thus briefly touched upon the two principal points on which we take exception, not so much to any opinion of the author, as to the tone of sentiment which runs through the book; a tone of sentiment which otherwise, for justness and nobleness, stands almost unrivalled in the writings of our time. A deep catholic sympathy with human nature, with all natural human feelings, looks out from every page of these volumes; justice administered in love, to all kind of human beings, bad and good; the most earnest exalted feeling of moral distinctions, with the most generous allowances for whatever partial confounding of these distinctions, either natural weakness or perverse circumstances can excuse. No greatness, no strength, no goodness or lovingness, passes unrecognized or unhonoured by him. All the sublimity of “the simultaneous death-defiance of twenty-five millions”[†] speaks itself forth in his pages—not the less impressively, because the unspeakable folly and incoherency, which always in real life are not one step from, but actually pervade, the sublimities of so large a body (and did so most notably in this instance) are no less perceptible to his keen sense of the ludicrous. We presume it is this which has caused the book to be accused, even in print, of “flippancy,” a term which appears to us singularly misapplied.[‡] For is not this mixture and confused entanglement of the great and the contemptible, precisely what we meet with in nature? and would not a history, which did not make us not only see this, but feel it, be deceptive; and give an impression which would be the more false, the greater the general vivacity and vigour of the delineation? And indeed the capacity to see and feel what is loveable, admirable, Edition: current; Page: [164] in a thing, and what is laughable in it, at the same time, constitutes humour; the quality to which we owe a Falstaff, a Parson Adams, an Uncle Toby, and Mause Headriggs and Barons of Bradwardine without end.[*] You meet in this book with passages of grave drollery (drollery unsought for, arising from the simple statement of facts, and a true natural feeling of them) not inferior to the best in Mr. Peacock’s novels; and immediately or soon after comes a soft note as of dirge music, or solemn choral song of old Greek tragedy, which makes the heart too full for endurance, and forces you to close the book and rest for a while.

Again, there are aphorisms which deserve to live for ever; characters drawn with a few touches, and indicating a very remarkable insight into many of the obscurest regions of human nature; much genuine philosophy, disguised though it often be in a poetico-metaphysical vesture of a most questionable kind; and, in short, new and singular but not therefore absurd or unpractical views taken of many important things. A most original book; original not least in its complete sincerity, its disregard of the merely conventional: every idea and sentiment is given out exactly as it is thought and felt, fresh from the soul of the writer, and in such language (conformable to precedent or not) as is most capable of representing it in the form in which it exists there. And hence the critics have begun to call the style “affected;”[†] a term which conventional people, whether in literature or society, invariably bestow upon the unreservedly natural.*

In truth, every book which is eminently original, either in matter or style, has a hard battle to fight before it can obtain even pardon for its originality, much less applause. Well, therefore, may this be the case when a book is original, not in matter only or in style only, but in both; and, moreover, written in prose, with a Edition: current; Page: [165] fervour and exaltation of feeling which is only tolerated in verse, if even there. And when we consider that Wordsworth, Coleridge, and others of their time, whose deviation from the beaten track was but a stone’s throw compared with Mr. Carlyle, were ignominiously hooted out of court by the wise tribunals which in those days dispensed justice in such matters, and had to wait for a second generation before the sentence could be reversed, and their names placed among the great names of our literature, we might well imagine that the same or a worse fate awaits Mr. Carlyle; did we not believe that those very writers, aided by circumstances, have made straight the way[*] for Mr. Carlyle and for much else. This very phenomenon, of the different estimation of Wordsworth and Coleridge, now, and thirty years ago, is among the indications of one of the most conspicuous new elements which have sprung up in the European mind during those years: an insatiable demand for realities, come of conventionalities and formalities what may; of which desire the literary phasis is, a large tolerance for every feeling which is natural and not got-up, for every picture taken from the life and not from other pictures, however it may clash with traditionary notions of elegance or congruity. The book before us needs to be read with this catholic spirit; if we read it captiously, we shall never have done finding fault. But no true poet, writing sincerely and following the promptings of his own genius, can fail to be contemptible to any who desire to find him so; and if even Milton’s Areopagitica,[†] of which now, it would seem, no one dares speak with only moderate praise, were now first to issue from the press, it would be turned from with contempt by every one who will think or speak disparagingly of this work of Mr. Carlyle.

We add one short extract more from near the end of the book; a summing up, as it were, of the morality of the great catastrophe:

The Convention, now grown Anti-Jacobin, did, with an eye to justify and fortify itself, publish lists of what the Reign of Terror had perpetrated—lists of persons guillotined. The lists, cries splenetic Abbé Montgaillard, were not complete. They contain the names of—how many persons thinks the reader?—Two Thousand all but a few. There were above four thousand, cries Montgaillard, so many were guillotined, fusilladed, noyaded, done to dire death; of whom nine hundred were women.[‡] It is a horrible sum of human lives, M. l’Abbé; some ten times as many shot rightly on a field of battle, and one might have had his Glorious-Victory with Te Deum. It is not far from the two-hundredth part of what perished in the entire Seven Years’ War. By which Seven Years’ War, did not the great Fritz wrench Silesia from the great Theresa; and a Pompadour, stung by epigrams, satisfy herself that she could not be an Agnes Sorel? The head of man is a strange vacant sounding-shell, M. l’Abbé, and studies Cocker to small purpose.[§]

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But what if History, somewhere on this planet, were to hear of a Nation, the third soul of whom had not, for thirty weeks each year, as many third-rate potatoes as would sustain him? History, in that case, feels bound to consider that starvation is starvation: that starvation from age to age presupposes much: History ventures to assert that the French Sansculotte of ninety-three, who, roused from long death-sleep, could rush at once to the frontiers and die fighting for an immortal Hope and Faith of Deliverance for him and his, was but the second-miserablest of men! The Irish Sans-potato, had he not senses then; nay, a soul? In his frozen darkness, it was bitter for him to die famishing; bitter to see his children famish. It was bitter for him to be a beggar, a liar, and a knave. Nay, if that dreary Greenland-wind of benighted Want, perennial from sire to son, had frozen him into a kind of torpor and numb callosity, so that he saw not, felt not, was this, for a creature with a soul in it, some assuagement, or the cruellest wretchedness of all?

Such things were—such things are: and they go on in silence peaceably, and Sansculottisms follow them. History, looking back over this France through long times, back to Turgot’s time, for instance, when dumb Drudgery staggered up to its King’s Palace, and in wide expanse of sallow faces, squalor and winged raggedness, presented, hieroglyphically, its Petition of Grievances, and for answer got hanged on a “new gallows forty feet high,”[*]—confesses, mournfully, that there is no period to be met with, in which the general twenty-five millions of France suffered less than in this period which they name Reign of Terror! But it was not the Dumb Millions that suffered here; it was the Speaking Thousands, and Hundreds, and Units, who shrieked, and published, and made the world ring with their wail, as they could and should that is the grand peculiarity. The frightfullest Births of Time are never the loud speaking ones, for these soon die, they are the silent ones which can live from century to century! Anarchy, hateful as Death, is abhorrent to the whole nature of man, and so must itself soon die.

Wherefore let all men know what of depth and of height is still revealed in man, and, with fear and wonder, with just sympathy and just antipathy, with clear eye and open heart, contemplate it and appropriate it; and draw innumerable inferences from it. This inference, for example, among the first.—That “if the gods of this lower world will sit on their glittering thrones, indolent as Epicurus’ gods, with the living Chaos of Ignorance and Hunger weltering uncared for at their feet, and smooth Parasites preaching Peace, peace, when there is no peace,” then the dark chaos, it seems, will rise. . . . That there be no second Sansculottism in our earth for a thousand years, let us understand well what the first was: and let Rich and Poor of us go and do otherwise.[†]

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ARMAND CARREL 1837

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EDITOR’S NOTE

Dissertations and Discussions, 2nd ed. (1867), I, 211-83, where the title appears as “Armand Carrel. / Biographical Notices by MM. Nisard and Littré”; the title is footnoted, “London and Westminster Review, October 1837.” Reprinted from L&WR, XXXVIII (Oct., 1837), 66-111, where it is headed: “Art IV.—Armand Carrel, his Life and Character. From the French of D. Nisard. Preceded by a Biographical Sketch, abridged from the French of E. Littré. London: Hooper (not yet published).” (For reasons given in the Textual Introduction, cii above, references in the text are not to this work, but to Jean Marie Napoléon Désiré Nisard, “Armand Carrel,” La Revue des Deux Mondes, XII [Oct., 1837], 5-54; and Emile Littré, “Notice biographique,” in Oeuvres littéraires et économiques d’Armand Carrel, ed. Charles Romey [Paris: Guillaumin and Lecou, 1854], 5-66.) Running titles: “Armand Carrel.” Signed “A.” Also pamphlet offprint, with a title page reading: “Life and Character / of / Armand Carrel. / From the ‘London and Westminster Review,’ No. XI and LIV. / London: / Printed by C. and W. Peynell, / Little Pulteney Street. / MDCCCXXXVII.” Repaginated [1]-47, [48] blank. Identified in Mill’s bibliography as “An article entitled ‘Armand Carrel’ in the same number of the same review [as ‘Parties and the Ministry’]” (MacMinn, 49). A copy of the pamphlet reprint in Mill’s library, Somerville College, has no corrections or emendations.

The following text, taken from the 2nd ed. of D&D (the last in Mill’s lifetime) is collated with that in D&D, 1st ed., the pamphlet offprint, and that in the L&WR. The two long quotations from Mill’s letter of 25 Nov., 1833, are collated with the original as printed in Earlier Letters. In the footnoted variants, “33” indicates the letter to Carlyle in Earlier Letters, “371” indicates L&WR, “372” indicates the pamphlet offprint, “59” indicates D&D, 1st ed. (1859), and “67” indicates D&D, 2nd ed. (1867).

For comment on the essay, see lxii-lxvii and c-ciii above.

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Armand Carrel

athese little works area the tribute paid by btwob distinguished cwritersc to one whose memory, though he was but shown to the world, the world will not, and must not be suffered to let die.[*] Cut off at the age of thirty-six by that union of misfortune and fault (Schicksal und eigene Schuld)[†] to which it has been asserted that all human miscarriages are imputable, he lived long enough to show that he was one of the few, never dso few as in these latter timesd, who seem raised up to turn the balance of events at some trying moment in the history of nations, and to have or to want whom, at critical periods, is the salvation or the destruction of an era.

eWe seize fthef opportunity to contribute what we can, as well from our own knowledge as from the materials supplied by MM. Nisard and Littré, towards a true picture of a man, more worthy to be known, and more fit to be imitated, than any who has occupied a position in European politics for many years. It has not been given to those who knew Carrel, to see him in any of those situations of outward power and honour, to which he would certainly have forced his way, and which, instead of being honours to ghimg, it was reserved for him perhaps to rescue from ignominy. The man whom not only his friends but his enemies, and all France, would have proclaimed President or Prime Minister with one voice, if any of the changes of this changeable time had again given ascendancy to the people’s side, is goneh; and his place is not likely to be again filled in our time. But there iarei left to us his memory, and his example jWe can stillj remember and meditate Edition: current; Page: [170] on what he was, how much and under how great disadvantages he accomplished, and what he would have been. We can learn from the study of him, what we all, but especially those of kindred principles and aspirations, must be, if we would make those principles effectual for good, those aspirations realities, and not the mere dreams of an idle and self-conceited imagination.

Who, then, and what was Armand Carrel? “An editor of a republican newspaper,” exclaims some English Tory, in a voice kbyk which it is doubtful whether the word “republican” or “newspaper” is uttered linl the most scornful intonation. Carrel was the editor of a republican newspaper: his glory consists precisely in this, that being that, and by being that, he was mthe greatest political leader of his timem. And we do not mean by a political leader one who can create and keep together a political party, or who can give it importance in the State, or nevenn who can make it deserve importance, but who can do any and every one of all these, and do them with an easy superiority of genius and character, which renders competition hopeless. Such was Carrel, Ripened by years and favoured by opportunity, he might have been the Mirabeau or the Washington of his age, or both in one.

The life of Carrel may be written in a few sentences. “Armand Carrel,” says M. Littré,

was a sub-lieutenant and a journalist: in that narrow circle was included the life of a man who, dying in the flower of youth, leaves a name known to all France, and lamented even by his political enemies. His celebrity came not from the favour of governments, nor from those elevated functions which give an easy opportunity of acquiring distinction, or, at the least, notoriety. Implicated in the conspiracies against the Restoration, an officer in the service of the Spanish Constitution, taken prisoner in Catalonia and condemned to death; bold in the opposition before the July Revolution, still bolder after it; he was always left to his own resources, so as never to pass for more than his intrinsic worth: no borrowed lustre was ever shed on him; he had no station but that which he created for himself. Fortune, the inexplicable chance which distributes cannon-balls in a battle, and which has so large a dominion in human affairs, did little or nothing for him, he had no “star,” no “run of luck;” and no one ever was less the product of favourable circumstances: he sought them not, and they came not. Force of character in difficult times, admirable talents as a writer at all times, nobleness of soul towards friends and enemies; these were what sustained him, and gave him in all quarters and in all times, not only an elevated place in the esteem of men, but an ascendancy over them.[*]

Thus far M. Littré, a man who does not cast his words at random—a witness, whose opinions indeed are those of Carrel, but whose life is devoted to other pursuits than politics, and whose simplicity and purity of character, esteemed by Edition: current; Page: [171] men who do not share his opinions, peculiarly qualified him to declare of Carrel that which othe besto men in France, of whatever party or shade of opinion, feel, M. Nisard, the representative of a much fainter shade of liberalism than M. Littré, does but fill up the same outline with greater richness of detail, with the addition of many interesting traits of personal character, and with a more analytical philosophy. From the two together we have learned the facts of the early life of Carrel, and many particulars of his habits and disposition, which could be known only to familiar companions. On the great features which make up a character, they show us almost nothing in Carrel which we had not ourselves seen in him: but, in what they have communicated, we find all those details which justify our general idea; and their recollections bear to our own the natural relation between likenesses of the same figure taken from different points. We can therefore, with increased confidence, attempt to describe what Carrel was; what the world has lost in him, and in what it mayp profit by his example.

The circumstance most worthy of commemoration in Carrel is not that he was an unblemished patriot in a time of general political corruption; others have been that, others are so even at present. Nor is it that he was the first political writer of his time: he could not have been this, if he had not been something to which his character as a writer was merely subsidiary. There are no great writers but those whose qualities as writers are built upon their qualities as human beings—are the mere manifestation and expression of those qualities: all besides is hollow and meretricious, and if a writer who assumes a stile for the sake of stile, ever acquires a place in literature, it is in so far as he qassumesq the stile of those rwhose stile is not assumedr; of those to whom language altogether is but the utterance of stheir feelings, or the means to their practical endss.

Carrel was one of these; and it may even be said that tbeing a writer was to him merely an accident. He was neither by character nor by preference a man of speculation and discussion, for whom the press, if still but a means, is the best and often the sole means of fulfilling his vocation. The career of an administrator or that of a umilitary commanderu would have been more to Carrel’s taste, and in either of them he would vprobablyv have excelled. The true idea of Carrel is not that of a literary man, but of a man of action, using the press as his instrument; and in no other aspect does his character deserve more to be studied by those of all countries, whow are qualified to resemble him.

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He was a man called to take an active part in the government of mankind, and needing an engine with which to move them. Had his lot been cast in the cabinet or in the camp, of the cabinet or of the camp he would have made his instrument. Fortune did not give him such a destiny, and his xprinciplesx did not permit him the means by which he could have acquired it. Thus excluded from the region of deeds, he had still that of words; and words are deeds, and the cause of deeds. Carrel was not the first to see, but he was the first practically to realize, the new destination of the political press in modern times. It is now beginning to be felt that journalism is to modern Europe what political oratory was to Athens and Rome, and that, to become what it ought, it should be wielded by the same sort of men: Carrel seized the sceptre of journalism, and with that, as with the ybatony of a general-in-chief,z ruled amidst innumerable difficulties and reverses that “fierce democracy,”[*] which he perhaps alone of all men living, trampled upon and irritated as it has been, could have rendered at once gentle and apowerfula.

Such a position did Carrel occupy, for a few short years in the history of his time. A brief survey of the incidents of his career and the circumstances of his country, will show how he bacquittedb himself in this situation. That he committed no mistakes in it, we are nowise concerned to prove. We may even, with the cmodestyc befitting a distant observer, express our opinion as to what his mistakes were. But we have neither known nor read of any man of whom dit could be saidd with assurance that, in Carrel’s circumstances and at his years, he would have committed fewer; and we are certain that there ehavee been none whose achievements would have been greater, for whosef errors nobler or more nobly redeemed.

Carrel was the son of a merchant of Rouen. He was intended for business, but his early passion for a military career induced his father (a decided royalist) to send him to the Ecole Militaire of St. Cyr. “His literary studies,” says M. Nisard,

were much neglected. He himself has told me that, although one of the best scholars in capacity, he was one of the most moderate in attainment. His military predilections showed themselves, even at school, in the choice of his reading. His favourite authors were the Edition: current; Page: [173] historians, especially where they treated of military events.g All other studies he was impatient of, and they profited him little. I have heard him say, however, that Virgil made an impression on him, and he has sometimes repeated verses to me which his memory had retained unforgotten, though never again read. . . . After leaving school, and while preparing for St. Cyr, he directed his studies exclusively to history and the strategic art. At St. Cyr he devoted to the same occupation all the time which the duties of the place allowed him.[*]

On leaving St. Cyr he entered the army as a sub-lieutenant, the grade answering in the French army to that of an ensign in the English.

In this early direction of the tastes and pursuits of Carrel, we may trace the cause of almost his only defects, and of his greatest qualities. From it he doubtless derived the practicalness (if the word may be pardoned) in which the more purely speculative Frenchmen of the present day (constituting a large proportion of the most accomplished minds of our age) it may be said without disrespect to them, are generally deficient; and of which in England we have too much, with but little of the nobler quality which in Carrel it served to temper and rein in. It is easy to be practical, in a society all practical: there is a practicalness which comes by nature, to those who know hlittleh and aspire to nothing, exactly this is the sort which the vulgar form of the English mind exemplifies, and which all the English institutions of education, whatever else they may teach, are studiously conservative of, but the atmosphere which kills so much thought, sobers what it spares, and the English who think at all, speculating under the restraining influence of such a medium, are guided more often than the thinkers of other countries into the practicalness which, instead of chaining up the spirit of speculation, lights its path and makes safe its footsteps.

What is done for the best English thinkers by the influences of the society in which they igrow upi, was done for Carrel by the inestimable advantage of an education and pursuits which had for their object not thinking or talking, but doing. jHe who thinks without any experience in action, or without having action perpetually in view; whose mind has never had anything to do but to form conceptions, without ever measuring itself or them with realities,j may be a great man; thoughts may originate with him, for which the world may bless him to the latest generationsk. There ought to be such men, for they see many things which Edition: current; Page: [174] even wise and strong minds, which are engrossed with active life, never can be the first to see. But the man to lead his age is he who has been familiar with thought directed to the accomplishment of immediate objects, and who has been accustomed to see his theories brought early and promptly to the test of experiment; the man who has seen at the end of every theorem to be investigated, a problem to be solved; who has learned early to weigh the means which can be exerted against the obstacles which are to be overcome, and to make an estimate of means and of obstacles habitually a part of all his theories that have for their object practice, either at the present or at a more distant period. This was essentially Carrel’s distinguishing character among lthe popular party in his own country;l and it is a side of his character which, naturally perhaps, has hardly yet been enough appreciated in France. In it he resembled Napoleon, who had learnt it in the same school, and who by it mastered and ruled, as far as so selfish a man could, his country and age. But Napoleon’s really narrow and imperfectly cultivated mind, and his peremptory will, turned aside contemptuously from all speculation, and all attempt to stand up for speculation, as bavardagem. Carrel, born at a more fortunate time, and belonging to a generation whose best heads and hearts war and the guillotine had not swept away, had an intellect capacious enough to appreciate and sympathize with whatever of truth nandn ultimate value to mankind there might be in all theories, together with a rootedly practical turn of mind, which seized and appropriated to itself such part only of them as might be realized, or at least might be hoped to be realized, in his own day. As with all generous spirits, his hopes sometimes deceived him as to what his country was ripe for; but a short experience always corrected his mistake, and warned him to point his efforts towards some more attainable end.

Carrel entered into life, and into a military life, at a peculiar period. By foreign force, and under circumstances humiliating to the military pride of the nation, the Bourbons had been brought back. With them had returned the emigrants with their feudal prejudices, the ultra-Catholics with their bigotry and pretensions to priestly domination. Louis XVIII, taking the advice of Fouché, though in a different sense from that in which it was given, had lain down in the bed of Napoleon, “s’était couché dans les draps de Napoléon”—had preserved that vast net-work of administrative tyranny which did not exist under the old French government, which the Convention created for a temporary purpose, and which Napoleon made permanent;[*] that system of obureaucracyo, which leaves no free agent in all Edition: current; Page: [175] France, except the man at Paris who pulls the wires; which regulates from a distance of several hundred miles, the repairing of a shed or the cutting down of a tree, and allows not the people to stir a finger even in their local affairs, except indeed by such writing and printing as a host of restrictive laws permitted to them, and (if they paid 300 francs or upwards in direct taxes) by electing and sending to Paris the two-hundredth or three-hundredth pfractionalp part of a representative, there to vote such things as the Charter of Louis XVIII placed within the competency of the national council.[*] That Charter, extorted from the prudence of Louis by the necessities of the times, and “broken ere its ink was dried,” alone stood between France and a dark, soul-stifling and mind-stifling despotism, combining qsome ofq the worst of the evils which the Revolution and Napoleon had cleared away, with the worst of those which they had brought.

By a combination of good sense and rfollyr, of which it is difficult to say which swass most profitable to the cause of freedom, the Bourbons saw the necessity of giving a representative constitution, but not that of allying themselves with the class in whose hands that constitution had placed so formidable a power. They would have found them tractable enough; witness the present ruler of France,[†] who has “lain down in the sheets of Napoleon” with considerably more effect. The Constitution of 1814, like that of 1830 which followed it, gave a share of the governing power exclusively to the rich:[‡] if the Bourbons would but have allied themselves with the majority of the rich instead of the minority, they would have been on the throne now, and with as absolute a power as any of their predecessors, so long as they conformed to that condition. But they would not do it: they would not see that the only aristocracy possible in a wealthy community, is an aristocracy of wealth: Louis during the greater part of his reign, and Charles during the whole of his, bestowed exclusively upon the classes which had been powerful once, those favours which, had they been tsharedt with the classes which were powerful unowu, would have rendered the majority of those classes the most devoted adherents of the throne. For the sake of classes who had no longer vthe principalv weight in the country, and whose power was associated with the recollections of Edition: current; Page: [176]wallw which the country xmostx detested, the Bourbons not only slighted the new aristocracy, but kept both them and the people in perpetual alarm, both for ywhatevery was dearest to them in the institutions which the Revolution had given, and which had been cheaply purchased by the sacrifice of a whole generation, and even for the “material interests”[*] (such as those of the possessors of national property) which had grown out of the Revolution, and were identified with it. The Chamber of Deputies, therefore, or, as it might have been called, the new Estate of the Rich, worked like the Comitia Centuriata of the Roman Commonwealth, which, in this respect, it resembled. Like the Comitia Centuriata, it was, from the principle of its constitution, the organ of the rich; and like that, it served as an organ for popular purposes so long as the predominant section of the rich, being excluded from a direct share in the government, had a common interest with the people. This result might have been foreseen; but the Bourbons either did not foresee it, or thought themselves strong enough to prevent it.

At the time, however, when Carrel first entered into life, any one might have been excused for thinking that the Bourbons, if they had made a bad calculation for the ultimate zdurationz of their dynasty, had made a good one for aits present interestsa. They had bput down,b with triumphant success, a first attempt at resistance by the new aristocracy.

A Chamber of furious royalists, elected immediately after the second restoration (afterwards with affectionate remembrance called the chambre introuvable, from the impossibility of ever cagainc getting a similar one), had sanctioned or tolerated excesses against the opposite party, worthy only of the dmostd sanguinary times of the Revolution; and had carried their enterprises in behalf of feudalism and bigotry to a pitch of rashness by which Louis, who was no fanatic, was seriously alarmed: and in September 1817, amidst the applauses of all France, he dissolved the Chamber, and called to his councils a semi-liberal ministry. The indignation and alarm excited by the conduct of the royalists, produced a reaction among the classes possessed of property, in favour of liberalism. By the law as it then stood, a fifth part of the Chamber went out every year:[†] the elections in 1818 produced Edition: current; Page: [177] hardly any but liberals; those in 1819 did the same; and those of 1820, it was evident, would give the liberal party a majority. The electoral body too, as, fortunately, electoral bodies are wont, had not confined its choice to men who represented exactly its own interests and sentiments, but had mingled with them the ablest and most honoured of its temporary allies, the defenders of the “good old cause.”[*] The new aristocracy could still hear, and not repudiate, the doctrines of 1789, pronounced with the limitations dictated by experience, from the eloquent lips of Foy, and Benjamin Constant, and Manuel. It could still patronize a newspaper press, efree for the first time since 1792e, which raised its voice for those doctrines, and for an interpretation of the charter in the spirit of them. Even among the monied classes themselves there arose, as in all aristocracies there will, some men whose talents or sympathies make them the organs of a better cause than that off aristocracy. Casimir Périer had not yet sunk the defender of the people in the defender of his counting-house; and Laffitte was then what he is still, and will be to the end of his disinterested and generous career. Among the new members of the legislature there was even found the Abbé Grégoire, one of the worthiest and most respected characters in France, but a gconspicuous member of the Montagne party in the Conventiong.*

This rapid progress of the popular party to ascendancy was not what Louis had intended: he wished to keep the liberals as a counterpoise to the priestly party, but it never entered into his purposes that they should predominate in the legislature. His “système de bascule”, literally hsystem of see-sawh, of playing off one party against another, and maintaining his influence by throwing it always into the scale of the weakest, required that the next move should be to the royalist side. Demonstrations were therefore made towards a modification of the electoral law; to take effect while the anti-popular party had still a majority, before the dreaded period of the next annual elections. At this crisis, when the fate of parties hung trembling in the balance, the Duc de Berri, heir presumptive to the throne, fell by the hand of an assassin. This catastrophe, industriously imputed to the renewed propagation of revolutionary principles, excited general horror and alarm. The new aristocracy recoiled from their alliance with liberalism. The crime of Louvel was as serviceable to the immediate objects of those against whom it was Edition: current; Page: [178] perpetrated, as the crime of Fieschi has been since. A change of ministry took place; laws were passed restrictive of the press, and a law which, while it kept within the letter of the charter by not disfranchising any of the electors, created within the electoral body a smaller body returning an additional number of representatives.[*] The elections which took place in consequence, gave a decided majority to the feudal and priestly party; an ultra-royalist ministry was appointed; and the triumph of the iretrogradesi, the party of ancient privileges, seemed assured.

It is incident to a country accustomed to a state of revolution, that the party which is defeated by peaceful means will try violent ones. The popular party in France was now in a similar situation to the popular party in England during the royalist reaction which followed the dissolution of the last parliament of Charles II. Like them, they had recourse to what Carrel afterwards, in his History of the Counter-Revolution in England, called “the refuge of weak parties,” conspiracy.[†] The military revolutions in Spain, Portugal, and Naples, had jinspiredj many ardent spirits in France kwith a desire to follow the examplek: from 1820 to 1822 lCarbonarol societies spread themselves over France, and military conspiracies continually broke out and were suppressed. It would have been surprising if Carrel, whose favourite heroes even at school were Hoche, Marceau, and Kléber, whose democratic opinions had attracted the notice of his superiors at St. Cyr, and to whose youthful aspirations no glory attainable to him appeared equal to that of the successful general of a liberating army, had not been implicated in some of these conspiracies. Like almost all the bravest and most patriotic of the young men in his rank of society entertaining liberal opinions, he paid his tribute to the folly of the day; and he had a narrow escape from discovery, of which M. Littré gives the following narrative.

Carrel was a sub-lieutenant in the 29th of the line, in 1821, when conspiracies were forming in every quarter against the Restoration. The 29th was in garrison at Béfort and New Brisach. Carrel was quartered in the latter place. He was engaged in the plot since called the conspiracy of Béfort. The officers at New Brisach who were in the secret, were discouraged by repeated delays, and would not stir until the insurrection should have exploded at Béfort. It was indispensable, however, that they should move as soon as the blow should have been successfully struck in the latter place. The Grand Lodge (of Edition: current; Page: [179] Carbonari) had sent from Paris several conspirators, one of them. M. Joubert, had come to New Brisach, to see what was to be done; Carrel offered to go with him to Béfort, to join in the movement, and bring back the news to New Brisach. Both set off, and arrived at Béfort towards midnight. The plot had been discovered, several persons had been arrested, the conspirators were dispersed. Carrel rode back to New Brisach at full gallop, and arrived early in the morning. He had time to return to his quarters, put on his uniform, and attend the morning exercise, without any one’s suspecting that he had been out all night. When an inquiry was set on foot to discover the accomplices of the Béfort conspirators, and especially to find who it was that had gone thither from New Brisach, nothing could be discovered, and suspicion rested upon any one rather than Carrel, for his careless levity of manner had made his superiors consider him a man quite unlikely to be engaged in plots.[*]

Nine years later, M. Joubert was heading the party which stormed the Louvre on the 29th of July, and Carrel had signed the protest of the forty-two journalists, and given, by an article in the National, the first signal of resistance.[†] This is not the only instance in the recent history of France, when, as during the first French Revolution, names lost sight of for a time, meet us again at the critical moments.

These attempts at insurrection did the Bourbons no damage, but caused them some uneasiness with regard to the fidelity of the army. The counter-revolutionary party, however, was now under the conduct of the only man of judgment and sagacity who has appeared in that party since the Revolution; M. de Villèle. This minister madopted (though, it is said, with misgiving and reluctance)m the bold idea of conquering the disaffection of the army by sending it to fight against its principles. He knew that with men in the position and in the state of feeling in which it was, all depended on the first step, and that if it could but be induced to fire one shot for the drapeau blanc against the tricolore, its implicit obedience might be reckoned on for a long time to come.n Accordingly, constitutional France took the field against constitutional government in Spain, as constitutional England had done before in France—in order that Ferdinand, save the mark! might be restored to the enjoyment of liberty: and the history of the campaign, by which he was restored to it, ofurnisheso a curious picture of a victorious army putting down by force those with whom it sympathized, and protecting them against the vengeance of allies whom it despised and detested.

At this period, political refugees, and other ardent lovers of freedom, especially military men, flocked to the Spanish standard; even England, as it may be remembered, contributing her share, in the persons of Sir Robert Wilson and others. Carrel, already obnoxious by his opinions to his superior officers, and now placed between the dictates of his conscience and those of military discipline, Edition: current; Page: [180] acted like Major Cartwright at the opening of the American war: he threw up his commission rather than fight in a cause he pabhorredp. Having done this, he did what Major Cartwright did not: he joined the opposite party, passed over to Barcelona in a Spanish fishing-boat, and took service in the “foreign liberal legion,”[*] commanded by a distinguished officer, Colonel Pachiarotti, an Italian exile.

We shall not trace Carrel through the vicissitudes of this campaign, which was full of hardships, and abounded in incidents honourable to him both as an officer and as a man. It is well known that in Catalonia the invading army experienced from Mina, Milans, and their followers, almost the only vigorous resistance it had to encounter; and in this resistance the foreign legion, in which Carrel served, bore a conspicuous part. Carrel himself has sketched the history of the contest in two articles in the Revue Française,qmuch remarked at the timeq for their impartiality and statesmanlike views, and which first established his reputation as a writer.[†]

In September 1823, the gallant Pachiarotti had already fallen; supported on horseback by Carrel during a long retreat after he was mortally wounded, and recommending with his dying breath to the good offices of the rpersons presentr, “ce brave et noble jeune homme.” What remained of the legion, after having had, in an attempt to relieve Figueras, two desperate encounters with superior force, at Llado and Llers, in which it lost half its numbers, capitulated,* and Carrel became the prisoner of his former commanding officer, the Baron de Damas. As a condition of the surrender, M. de Damas pledged himself to use his utmost exertions for obtaining the pardon of all the French who were included in the capitulation. Though such a pledge was formally binding only on the officer who gave it, no government could without sdishonours have refused to fulfil its conditions; least of all the French cabinet, of which M. de Damas almost immediately afterwards became a member. But the rancour which felt itself restrained from greater acts of vindictiveness, with characteristic littleness took refuge in smaller ones. Contrary to the express promise of M. de Damas (on whose Edition: current; Page: [181] individual honour, however, no imputation appears to rest), and in disregard of the fact that Carrel had ceased to be a member of the army before he committed any act contrary to its laws, the prisoners, both officers and soldiers, were thrown into gaol, and Carrel was among the first selected to be tried by military law before a military tribunal. The first court-martial declared itself incompetent. A second was appointed, and ordered to consider itself competent. By this second court-martial he was found guilty, and sentenced to death. He appealed to a superior court, which annulled the sentence, on purely technical grounds. The desire of petty vengeance was now somewhat appeased. After about nine months of rigorous and unwholesome confinement, which he employed in diligent studies, chiefly historical, Carrel was brought a third time to trial before a third court-martial, and acquitted; and was once again, at the age of twenty-four, turned loose upon the world.

After some hesitations, and a struggle between the wishes of his family, which pointed to a counting-house, and his own consciousness of faculties suited for a different sphere, he became secretary to M. Augustin Thierry, one of that remarkable constellation of tcotemporaryt authors who have placed France at the head of modern historical literature. Carrel assisted M. Thierry (whose sight, since totally lost, had already been weakened by his labours) in collecting the materials for the concluding volume of his longest work, The History of the Conquest of England by the Normans:[*] and it was by M. Thierry’s advice that Carrel determined to make literature his profession. M. Nisard gives an interesting account of the manner in which the doubts and anxieties of Carrel’s mother gave way before the authority of M. Thierry’s reputation.

During this period, Carrel’s mother made a journey to Paris M. Thierry’s letters had not removed her uneasiness; the humble life of a man of letters did not give her confidence, and did not seem to be particularly flattering to her. She needed that M. Thierry should renew his former assurances, and should, in a manner, stand surety for the literary capacity and for the future success of her son. At two different meetings with M. Thierry, she made a direct appeal to him to that effect “Vous croyez donc, Monsieur, que mon fils fait bien, et qu’il aura une carrière?” “Je réponds de lui,” answered M. Thierry, “comme de moi-même: j’ai quelqu’expérience des vocations littéraires: votre fils a toutes les qualités qui réussissent aujourd’hui.” While he thus spoke, Madame Carrel fixed upon him a penetrating look, as if to distinguish what was the prompting of truth, from what might be the effect of mere politeness, and a desire to encourage. The young man himself listened in respectful silence, submissive, and according to M. Thierry almost timid, before his mother, whose decision and firmness of mind had great sway over him. Carrel, in this, bowed only to his own qualities: what awed him in his mother was the quality by which afterwards, as a public man, he himself overawed others. The first meeting had left Madame Carrel still doubtful. M. Thierry, pressed between two inflexible wills, the mother requiring of him almost to Edition: current; Page: [182] become personally responsible for her son, the son silently but in intelligible language pledging himself that the guarantee should not be forfeited, had doubtless at the second meeting expressed himself still more positively. Madame Carrel returned to Rouen less uneasy and more convinced.[*]

Here then closes the first period of the life of Carrel; and the second, that of his strictly literary life, begins. This lasted till the foundation of the National, a few months before the Revolution of July.

The period of six years, of which we have now to speak, formed the culminating point of one of the most brilliant developments of the French national mind: a development which for intensity and rapidity, and if not for duration, for the importance of its durable consequences, has not many parallels in history. A large income not being in France, for persons in a certain rank of society, a necessary of life; and the pursuit of money being therefore not so engrossing an object as it is here, there is nothing to prevent the whole of the most gifted young men of a generation from devoting themselves to literature or science, if favourable circumstances combine to render it fashionable to do so. Such a conjuncture of circumstances was presented by the state of France, at the time when the Spanish war and its results seemed to have riveted on the necks of the French people the yoke of the feudal and sacerdotal party for many years to come. The Chamber was closed to all under the age of forty; and besides, at this particular period, the law of partial renewal had been abrogated, a septennial act had been passed,[†] and a general election, at the height of the Spanish triumph, had left but sixteen Liberals in the whole Chamber of Deputies. The army, in a time of profound peace, officered too by the detested émigrés, held out no attraction. Repelled from politics, in which little preferment could be hoped for by a uroturieru, and that little at a price which a Frenchman will least of all consent to pay—religious hypocrisy; the élite of the educated youth of France precipitated themselves into literature and philosophy, and remarkable results soon became evident.

The national intellect seemed to make a sudden stride, from the stage of adolescence to that of early maturity. It had reached the era corresponding to that in the history of an individual mind, when, after having been taught to think (as every one is) by teachers of some particular school, and having for a time exercised the power only in the path shown to it by its first teachers, it begins, without abandoning that, to tread also in other paths; learns to see with its naked eyes, and Edition: current; Page: [183] not through the eye-glasses of its teachers,[*] and, from being one-sided, becomes many-sided[†] and of no school. The French nation had had two great epochs of intellectual development. It had been taught to speak by the great writers of the seventeenth century,—to think by the philosophers of the eighteenth. The present became the era of reaction against the vnarrownessesv of the eighteenth century, as well as against those narrownesses of another sort which the eighteenth century had left. The stateliness and conventional decorum of old French poetic and dramatic literature, gave place to a licence which made free scope for genius and also for absurdity, and let in new forms of the beautiful was well as manyw of the hideous. Literature shook off its chains, and used its liberty like a galley-slave broke loose; while painting and sculpture passed from one unnatural extreme to xanotherx, and the stiff school was succeeded by the spasmodic. This insurrection against the old traditions of classicism was called romanticism: and now, when the mass of yrubbishy to which it had given birth has produced another oscillation in opinion the reverse way, one inestimable result seems to have survived it—that life and human feeling may now, in France, be painted with as much liberty as they may be discussed, and, when painted truly, with approval: as by George Sand, and in the best writings of Balzac. While this revolution was going on in the artistic departments of literature, that in the scientific departments was still more important. There was reaction against the metaphysics of Condillac and Helvetius; and some of the most eloquent men in France imported Kantism from Germany, and Reidism from Scotland, to oppose to it, and listening crowds applauded, and an “eclectic philosophy” was formed. There was reaction against the irreligion of Diderot and d’Holbach; and by the side of their irreligious philosophy there grew up religious philosophies, and philosophies prophesying a religion, and a general vague feeling of religion, and a taste for religious ideas. There was reaction against the premises, rather than against the conclusions, of the political philosophy of the Constituent Assembly: men found out, that underneath all political philosophy there must be a social philosophy—a study of agencies lying deeper than forms of government, which, working through forms of government, produce in the long run most of what these seem to produce, and which sap and destroy all forms of Edition: current; Page: [184] government that lie across their path. Thus arose the new political philosophy of the present generation in France; which, considered merely as a portion of science, may be pronounced zgreatly